From the editor

Communication World, May-June, 2004 by Natasha Spring

There are pivotal moments when you've done your due diligence--researching, analyzing, testing and planning a big change--and it's time to make your move. You have the data, but you need something else that's even more important--the ability and power to trust your instincts.

When the CW team, including our publishing partner Douglas Murphy Communications, moved the magazine to a more contemporary design and raised the bar for editorial content, going forward required a certain leap of faith. There were no guarantees on what would happen.

Communication World had always been a well-respected magazine and a past award winner. So changes required an understanding and sense of what was working and what could be improved. Just over a year later, I'm glad to say that we appear to be on the right path.

Over the last 12 months following the redesign, readers wrote to us with both praise and criticism. Our online readership survey offered valuable input and included the good news that about 90 percent of respondents are satisfied with CW. And recently, preliminary findings from IABC's online member survey rank CW as the top member benefit.

In late April, we received feedback of another type. CW Assistant Editor Raha Naddaf and I had the good fortune to walk on stage in Los Angeles at the Western Publications Association conference and accept a Maggie award for Communication World in the category of "most improved trade publication with a circulation of 50,000 or less." Of 1,700 entrants, only 84 winners were announced that night. We were deeply honored to be among them.

There are many people who enabled the CW team to get to this point, including former staffer Naomi Mandelstein and our valued regional and contributing editors. But the successful redesign would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of IABC's leaders, management staff and the parting thoughts of long-time CW editor, Gloria Gordon.

I'd like to thank all of those readers who took the time to share their thinking on the magazine as we went through this process of change. We will keep seeking your input, listening and trying to understand your needs and preferences as we work to make CW useful, relevant, thought provoking and valuable.

It all comes back to trusting your instincts.