The Journal of Commerce (JOC) edition you currently hold in your hands will be the last of its kind as this publication now enters its digital future to better deliver its industry leading project information and news.
Today’s issue is the last one in print for the JOC after 108 years.
To be clear, the JOC is not going away — we are still here. We will continue our long tradition of delivering all the relevant project intelligence and news about the politics, people and processes that drive construction in British Columbia and Western Canada.
The decision to cease the print version of the JOC is not one we have taken lightly.
We have been preparing for this evolution for a few years now, investing in our digital tools, from our websites to CMD Leads, to our social media footprint and e-newsletters — and that investment and growth will continue.
The digital future of the JOC is one where we can deliver even more news and project information to our subscribers and readers.
As our growth continues into the digital space we will be able to make all our content available to you in a customizable way in order to better meet your needs. More leads, more breaking news, when you want it, when you need it — that is what the JOC will be for you.
Just over a year ago we began our digital evolution, with our Wednesday edition of the JOC being made available only in a digital format.
We now complete that change with today’s edition. Going forward, the JOC will be available to subscribers via an e-newsletter three times a week released on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, starting March 4.
What have we learned over the last few years as we embarked on our digital evolution?
We are reaching more industry stakeholders and readers than we ever have before in our history. The JOC has always been regarded as the definitive source for project information and news, the de facto “bible of the industry” as some people consider it. Our digital evolution only strengthens that fact.
Change is nothing new to the JOC as we know it now. Back in 1911 it started its long-heralded publication run as the Vancouver Building Record and there also was the British Columbia Building Record.
Then, in 1922, it became the Journal of Commerce and Building Record. In that first 1922 issue, under its new masthead, the publishers wrote to their subscribers and readers and the message from almost 100 years ago still applies today.
In that note they said, though that first issue was “by no means perfect” it was management’s aim to make the JOC “indispensable.”
“The new Journal of Commerce will cover the building trade field even more thoroughly than the B.C. Record, and will, in addition, present reliable news of all other lines of industrial activity in brief, readable form,” wrote the publishers. “In its enlarged field and size, the Journal of Commerce respectfully solicits the support of these sections of business and industrial fields to which it hopes to become a genuinely useful factor.”
So there you have it, the forefathers of ConstructConnect’s Journal of Commerce were retooling and preparing for a relevant, stronger future even back then to better serve the industry.
The JOC became more than a “genuinely useful factor” through the decades of dedication of its numerous staff and publishers.
We now carry that same goal, that same aim, to continue to be that indispensable place where the industry comes to be successful, to communicate and to prosper.
Join us in celebrating our print history today and continue to grow with us as we evolve into our digital future.
Those of us who were part of the Southam years for DCN and JoC will miss the smell of ink on paper.