Copy editor Bruce Dyck was wondering aloud the other day why he could once lay out the entire Western Producer, editorially speaking, almost all by himself.
He was the sole layout editor in the late 1980s and early 1990s, although he got some help on a few of the pages.
He began looking through the back copies of The Producer, and realized that the papers were, on average, smaller in those days.
The pages were physically slightly larger, and so was the size of the type, but in general the generations of The Western Producer are pretty comparable.
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March tends to host the Producer’s largest papers. In March, 1988, one of the editions was 80 pages. In March, 1991, two of the editions were 80 and 88 pages. By July, the papers trickled off into 64-page territory.
Certainly, there were some fairly large editions in “the old days,” like a 104-pager on March 19, 1981.
But overall, we’re bigger today than we were two or three decades ago. The Feb. 21 edition in 1991 was 72 pages. This issue is 112.
That is truly amazing. The Western Producer is actually fatter and juicier than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. You can really sink your teeth into it.
I argued last week that newspapers are, while perhaps slightly smaller, far from nearing demise.
The internet, the recession and more citizen journalism has definitely altered most publications forever, but publishers are resilient and have found new ways to attract readers, in print and online, while protecting core products.
Even so, few papers are actually bigger than they were 20 or 30 years ago — but this one is.
There are many reasons for The Western Producer’s health and growth, among them skilled and dedicated staff members like Bruce. More globally speaking, targeted publications like ours do seem to be thriving more than daily papers.
Longevity doesn’t hurt, either. On every front page, you will see the tagline “Serving Western Canadian Farm Families since 1923.”
That’s a very long time to develop relationships with your readers, their sons and daughters, and their grandsons and granddaughters.
We are ever so grateful for your continued readership, and especially so as we contemplate the future.
We begin our 90th year in August, and look forward to carrying on our tradition of big, fat, information-crammed editions.
