Change is constant

The Constancy of Change

A message from AJ’s publisher about the constancy of change and the future of AJ

With the beginning of the new school year, I’m reminded that sometimes the only constant in life is change. Students enroll in programs as first years and sooner than can be imagined, they’ve moved on to begin their career development. Professors who we first met as grad students are now inspiring young minds on campuses across the nation (and around the globe).

With the beginning of the new school year, I’m reminded that sometimes the only constant in life is change. Students enroll in programs as first years and sooner than can be imagined, they’ve moved on to begin their career development. Professors who we first met as grad students are now inspiring young minds on campuses across the nation (and around the globe). More than a few interns have stepped through A\J’s doors into the corporate environment for the first time – and then turn around to find them as respected corporate sustainability experts, actively putting their passion for the environment to work.

Life is about growth, development and, yes, change. And life for an environmental media organization is no different; we’ve had to get used to our fair share of change in the past 40+ years. Alternatives was founded in 1971 at Trent University and moved to uWaterloo in 1985. We started our life as an academic transfer journal serving the environmental educators. Today, we’re Canada’s only nonprofit environmental media organization publishing in print and online, engaging with more readers, involving more stakeholders and making more positive impacts in everything we do.

For those of you familiar with publishing know that change is also a standard in that industry. From paste-up art to desktop publishing to online forums to basic websites to video storytelling to social media. And that’s not even touching on the business aspects of publishing, with diminishing newsstand presence, migrating advertising dollars, and the increasing costs of creating online content that many expect to read for free.

Well, the summer of 2015 will go down as another period of change for A\J, a time to say some teary-eyed goodbyes to long-time office colleagues who’s contributions to the growth and development of A\J over the past few years were truly meaningful and vitally important as we continued to evolve to serve our community. We’re going to miss Michael Torreiter, Laura McDonald, Jordan Teichmann and others – but we are comforted in knowing that they will continue to advocate for positive social change in their new responsibilities and on behalf of their new organizations.

And this summer was also a time to say some excited HELLOs to new A\Jers, including new Editorial Manager, Megan Nourse, who returns to us after two stints as an intern/volunteer and with a publishing-rich CV that includes working with a daily newspaper. We have also recently welcomed Naomi Roy and Eunize Lao as editorial interns this fall (joining us from the co-op program at uWaterloo’s Faculty of Environment). We’ll be adding to team A\J in the months to come to address must-have skill sets such as video story-telling, mobile content development and event-based audience engagement.

Additionally, A\J has engaged the services of Second Revolution Communications to lead our business development initiatives as we look to ratchet up our activities across all of our platforms as we head into our 45th anniversary year. Don’t be surprised if your business or organization hears from them on A\J’s behalf.

This was a lot of change in a short period of time, but rest assured that team A\J is more excited than ever about the importance of our mission, the nature of our work in the environmental community, and the ability to work with our partners and associates to inspire – well – change.

Until next time, rock on!

Marcia

Marcia Ruby is the publisher emerita and creative director of Alternatives Journal.