Evolution

As Dan Gibson mentioned last week on the Weekly Wide Web page, some of us were recently in San Francisco for the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies' annual Web Conference.

Man, things have changed a lot in the eight years that I've had this gig. Back in early 2003, the Tucson Weekly was a weekly printed newspaper that posted its content on a website once a week. And that was all, folks. There was no such thing as, say, an AAN Web Conference.

In 2011, the Tucson Weekly is still a printed newspaper, yes, but it's also an online-information organization that is constantly producing fresh news and other content online, and promoting said content—while interacting with readers—through TucsonWeekly.com and other social-media organizations.

Of course, our evolution continues. As we approach the fifth anniversary of The Range, our daily dispatch (what we used to call our blog), we'll be making some fairly major tweaks to TucsonWeekly.com to better highlight that fresh content. Today, when you go to TucsonWeekly.com, the content you see first and foremost throughout most of the site is the stuff that we produce each week for the printed version.

That won't be the case in several months. (Of course, the stuff we produce each week for the printed version will still be easily accessible.)

All of this online stuff doesn't mean we're giving short shrift to print. In fact, the opposite is true: We're just starting discussions about the next redesign of the print Tucson Weekly, and we're bouncing around some rather exciting ideas.

And I haven't even talked about apps and other things that we're discussing.

These are exciting times for journalism and the Tucson Weekly. Stay tuned.