Adjusting to the less-frequent publication schedule at the biweekly Journal of Business was a big challenge for me when I joined the news team here more than 26 years ago, after having spent the bulk of my earlier career at daily newspapers.

It wasn’t so much the different pace of the news-preparation effort that I found disconcerting; it was not being able to offer readers some hopefully informative community news to peruse over their morning coffee each day.

For a long time after leaving the daily newsroom, I continued to feel that journalist’s itch, but with no way to scratch it. The arrival of the digital age, thankfully, helped provide the scratching post I needed. 

It gave the Journal—along, of course, with all other general-audience and niche print media outlets, regardless of publishing frequency—the ability to provide their readers with the latest breaking news almost instantaneously.

That has balanced the journalistic playing field in many ways, and it has been a huge benefit to avid readers, who now want and expect to receive their news in real time.

At the Journal, the first modest step in that direction—though hugely significant in our eyes—was the launch years ago of an email news update. Through that digital medium, we were able to amass a solid base of subscribers interested in receiving occasional electronic blasts about noteworthy local business happenings.

Since then, we’ve dramatically improved our website to better serve our readers and have taken steps to increase our social media presence, partly in an effort to connect better with young people in business who spend a lot of time in that digital realm.

The most significant step we’ve taken recently—and one that continues to generate a surprising amount of favorable feedback—was our launch one year ago of a free, five-day-a-week morning edition that we send to readers via email.

Through that news digest, we strive to provide busy business owners, managers, professionals, and other local business observers with a quick-read smattering of the latest business-related happenings here and throughout the Pacific Northwest. Though the content often is regional in scope, our focus—as always—is intensely local. Most of the news items there provide hyperlinks readers can click if they want more detailed information than what’s shown.

The morning edition also provides us a means of reporting daily on a potpourri of smaller news items, such as new hires and promotions, real estate transactions, upcoming business meetings and conferences, and philanthropic awards. Additionally, it gives members of our news team an opportunity to comment on some of their favorite Journal business stories of late.

We now have more than 5,300 readers who subscribe to our daily news blast, which we’d like to think is an affirmation of the value of that added service. We’re thankful for that support and look forward to continuing to strengthen the Journal’s digital offerings in the years to come. We welcome and encourage your feedback on how best to enhance those services.