A New Year, a New Commitment to the Magazine.

AuthorMagnuson, Stew
PositionEditor's Notes

Change, as they say, is constant.

And that goes for whether one is developing cutting-edge technology, monitoring the Byzantine Defense Department acquisition regime, or producing a magazine that covers these two constantly shifting topics.

Recently being named editor-in-chief of National Defense Magazine was both a great honor and a great responsibility. Its heritage--like its publisher the National Defense Industrial Association--goes back nearly a century.

It began as a publication of the Army Ordnance Association in 1920, and was appropriately called Army Ordnance Magazine. As the association evolved, so too did the magazine, later becoming simply Ordnance, covering all the services. In 1973, it became National Defense as the organization's scope widened.

Building on the legacy of the great editors who made the magazine what it is will require remaining relevant.

And association leadership has reconfirmed its commitment to the magazine itself. The physical manifestation of National Defense appears in members' mailboxes once a month and serves as a steady reminder of their membership. While readers can see all its content online, the association will for the foreseeable future continue to produce a four-color magazine.

"The report of my death was an exaggeration," was Mark Twain's quote after an erroneous dispatch about his demise.

The same can be said of all the so-called "old" media. It might surprise some that the music industry sold a projected $1 billion worth of records in 2017. That's not CDs or digital downloads, but actual black vinyl records. The Kindle and other eReaders were supposed to spell the demise of books about five years ago. It hasn't happened. In fact, book sales are rising and eBook sales are sharply decreasing.

So with some 80,000 copies of National Defense being printed every month, the tangible version of the magazine is very much alive. Meanwhile, magazine stories are posted online without need of a password at nationaldefensemagazine.org, along with breaking news, web-only articles and the monthly podcast.

While print may not be dead, keeping the magazine relevant is another matter. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work identified several key technologies that the Pentagon will have to master in the coming years if it is to be successful on the battlefield as part of what he called "the third offset strategy." The U.S. military will "offset" any adversary's battlefield advantage through the use of...

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