All the News that Fits

IT THRILLED US when we unwrapped our new toy a few years ago. We were like a brood of budding race car drivers who got go-carts for Christmas and immediately began re-engineering them to compete on the Formula 1 circuit.

The toy is our email newsletter, The Fish & Game Report. This new vehicle opened a new dimension to our world of outdoor publishing. That world had been governed for decades by the limitations of producing and manufacturing a physical object to deliver the actual products of our creative energies.

What we make here at the Texas Fish & Game Publishing Company is information. Specialized information to help anglers and hunters get more out of their outdoors experiences.

Throughout our history, we’ve been frustrated by two inherent limitations dictated by nature itself: Space and time. Space, in the form of the paper-and-ink-based medium on which we make our product; time in the form of the unavoidable schedule of manufacturing and delivering that product.

We had a front row seat to witness the breathtaking advances that computers brought to publishing and every other aspect of modern business and life. When Apple gave us Desktop Publishing with the MacIntosh computer in the mid-nineteen eighties, it revolutionized the “front end” of our business. Unfortunately, the back end, where ink is pressed onto paper and finished magazines are then loaded onto Post Office trucks, is still pretty much the same basic technology as that of the nineteen seventies. Or, considering the core fundamentals of printing and distribution, maybe even the EIGHTEEN-seventies.

We built pages on computer screens that grew, in size and resolution, every year. The software got more and more sophisticated. It took us lightyears away from the days of hot wax and border tape, and Kodachrome photographic slides that had to be scanned with half-million-dollar contraptions to make color separations that we literally scotch-taped, one primary color at a time, onto giant film negatives the printers burned onto press plates.

These “front end” technological advances emphasized the relative lack of advances on the other end of our business—the physical production and delivery end. Sure… printing presses have become more efficient. Both speed and quality have seen significant improvements. But they still perform the same basic function as the machines Benjamin Franklin utilized in his publishing ventures almost three centuries ago: applying ink to paper. And while the United States Postal Service has upgraded its systems with automation and logistics technologies, they still must literally visit every address in the country to complete their delivery services. Delivery times, therefore, have only gotten slower.

It frustrated us to see our pages displayed crisply on hi-res computer screens that ink-on-paper reproductions just couldn’t compete with. It also frustrated us that once we sent an issue to the printer, it was locked. Frozen in time. And by the time our issues arrived in subscriber mailboxes, other events might have happened that we would have liked to cover and would have to wait weeks before we could report them.

When the Internet exploded onto the scene, it brought with it web pages, video streaming and email. Two decades into it, we’ve gone all-in. Our website allows us to report on fishing and hunting events and developments almost in real time. Our digital editions of each bi-monthly issue enable us to pack much more—and much more dynamic—content into them than we can get into the ink-on-paper editions. Plus, they are available instantly upon release—without the wait for the mailman, or a trip to Academy to buy a copy.

Then, there is The Fish & Game Report, mentioned above. This is the game changer. Three days a week, we report on the news, important issues, and events that are important to anglers and hunters in Texas (and beyond). We see this vehicle as the centerpiece of our future. We’ll always devote great care and effort to the print version of Texas Fish & Game. That’s our legacy. But The Fish & Game Report is our future. And we are committed to building on its potential. Within a few weeks we will release an upgraded version. We’re re-organizing it and reinforcing our mission to bring you the best outdoors content possible. More current reports on the issues that affect your fishing and hunting. More how-to articles and videos to improve your experiences. More interesting stories to keep you entertained.

If you haven’t subscribed already, go to FishGame.com and hit the Newsletter button on the top menu.

The future is here, and for us, it was worth the wait.

E-mail Roy at rneves@fishgame.com and Ardia at aneves@fishgame.com

 

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