A Letter to Our Subscribers

Dear subscriber,

Technology Review was founded in 1899 and is published by Technology Review Inc., an independent enterprise owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For the better part of a century, our mission has been to describe emerging technologies and analyze their commercial, economic, social, and political impact for an audience of senior executives, researchers, financiers, policymakers, and MIT alumni.

That won’t change. But our print magazine and our website will be changing. This letter is to advise you, a valued customer, of those changes.

The publishing industry is experiencing an extraordinary alteration. Readers, and the advertisers who have for years subsidized the creation of editorial products, are spending more and more time and money on the Web. Readers want information to be immediate, searchable, and easily customized, and advertisers are demanding accountability from the publishers who take their money. Put baldly, the era when publishers could rely on print magazines to satisfy their readers and build sustainable businesses is over.

In keeping with MIT’s history of innovation and leadership, Technology Review has decided to invest more of its resources in interactive media. We do not believe, as some have opined, that “print is dead”; there are many things that print magazines do better than more interactive media. But we are sure that we must offer our readers and advertisers more products and choices online.

We are also convinced that our readers look to us for intelligent analysis of the impact of emerging technologies, and that when we stray from that mission we disappoint you.We will therefore:

•? Decrease the frequency of the print magazine to bimonthly publication;

•? Focus the print magazine on what print does best: present longer-format, investigative stories and colorful imagery;

•? Dramatically increase the number of stories we publish on technologyreview.com every day;

•? Expand the range of media we employ online to include podcasts, blogs, RSS feeds, and a variety of new technologies;

•? Focus all our editorial content on the impact of emerging technologies and discontinue our coverage of the business models and financing of new technologies.

In making these changes, we were mainly guided by you, our readers. We have followed with great excitement the increased traffic on technologyreview.com. And recent research revealed that fully 92 percent of you valued our coverage of emerging technologies, but as few as 34 percent liked our stories about technology finance and business models.

As a subscriber to the print magazine, you will receive the same number of issues; the length of your subscription will double. You will receive an issue every other month. Your next issue will be mailed in early February. In 2006 you will receive issues in March, May, July, September, and November. In 2007 you will receive issues in January, March, May, July, September, and November.

You will also have access to our premium content online, including our magazine archives.

Finally, I would urge you all to visit technologyreview.com, and experience in new media the same intelligent, analytical, groundbreaking editorial content you like in Technology Review magazine.

Yours sincerely,

Jason Pontin
Editor-in-chief and publisher
Technology Review