In an ever-evolving world, those that fear change are often left behind. I came across a quote by the famous French poet and journalist Anatole France, who said, “If we don’t change, we don’t grow.” At Western Livestock Journal, we feel this is more evident than ever before. Two years ago, we sat down as a group and decided to give ourselves a mission statement. It reads: To always serve our readers and advertisers, stay relevant in their lives, and forge meaningful relationships that drive mutual success. We take this mission to heart and are excited to share with you the changes taking place at WLJ.
United We Stand
In a recent Comments column written by fieldman Devin Murnin, he talked about how this industry is becoming more divided and unwilling to work with each other. I have traveled to many meetings and keep hearing the same thing. The same issues keep coming up, but the same players continue to not work together. It’s time for our representatives at these trade organizations to put us first and set their personal issues aside for the betterment of the industry. We are falling victim to being divided, which means we are much more prone to being conquered. This week we are launching a new monthly guest opinion column called United We Stand. We are reaching out to people across the country to talk about issues that we can all agree on. We want to hear what issues are impacting all of us with the hopes of showing these groups how it doesn’t matter where their dues dollars come from, what matters is that the dues dollars can go further if they are working together. Too many ranchers are continuing to disperse in a fantastic market. Rules and regulations coupled with economic pressure, retirements and opportunities to leave the business are outweighing the desire to keep going.
We know there will be issues that these groups simply don’t agree on and won’t work with each other on. What we aim to do is identify and gather more information on the issues that should be tackled with unity and solidarity. Our first guest in the column is Dan McCarty of Rifle, CO. Yes, he wore an NCBA hat for a while, but he sees the need to reach across the aisle for a greater good. He says so perfectly in this first piece, “If you take any two people from the cattle business, from anywhere in the country, they are going to have a lot in common.” Ranchers in California are much like ranchers in the Midwest. What separates us is the local issues and regulations that drive operations—or worse, destroy them. We hope you enjoy these columns each month.
A digital era
Since 1922, WLJ has been publishing a print product that is delivered every single week. This will not be changing. COVID definitely threw its punches at the print publication world and we are continuing to evolve with this. We remain wholeheartedly committed to our print product and value it deeply. We feel, though, that if we only rely on one segment for delivering information, we won’t grow. It is our mission to stay relevant. Many of you get your information on a device before the mailbox and it is our intent to deliver as much information in a timely manner as we possibly can.
WLJ will soon be launching its brand-new website! This project has been in the works for more than a year, and we are anxious to show it to you. The user experience and readability are much more friendly than on the old site. This will be the most up-to-date place for news and stories. We’ve built market reports with data and substance, and an interactive calendar with searchable sale reports that include data by breeds, states and averages. We are also building two sites to assist the home page that include a new classifieds page for you to list and shop. A real estate site will be available for realtors and ranchers to list their properties for sale and will include features for those to go on a search for properties for sale across the nation.
Lastly, our media kit is packed with print and digital advertising options for those wanting to market livestock, products and events. We now have the capabilities to offer additional digital advertising opportunities through Google and Yahoo, as well as social media outlets. When our mission statement says we want to stay relevant and drive mutual success, we feel we are lining ourselves up for that more than ever before.
It’s hard to condense all the changes coming to WLJ in this column, so look for these changes and more at wlj.net in the near future. As always, we welcome feedback to help us be the best place for information and advertising for the most dedicated readership in our industry. — LOGAN IPSEN
