Editor's Focus

The roller coaster ride the Internet has provided for the last four or five years has been a humbling experience for many people.

Granted, humble may have been the last word one associated with many of the “join or die” Internet advocates of a year or two ago. The Internet was oversold more blatantly than Florida swampland or tulip bulbs of past speculative eras, and naysayers were dismissed as hopelessly passé by many of the boosters.

The shakeout of the last 12 months, however, has turned a lot of the former optimists into spurned boosters of the Internet. Dot-com companies that once trumpeted every minor transaction with a multi-page press release have been quieted, and many of the former employees are now seeking work at the more traditional “brick and mortar” establishments they once perceived as irrelevant.

But Internet bashers should probably be careful not to gloat in an “I told you so” mode for very long. The World Wide Web, e-mail and other Internet features have by no means lost their relevance, nor are they declining in use.

What has been demonstrated is that reserving a Web domain name and then securing a few million dollars in venture capital should never have passed for a business plan. Building a business from scratch is no easier with an Internet connection than it was before the medium was invented.

The medium itself, however, is becoming an increasingly effective way to gather information, distribute information and communicate with key customers, suppliers and contacts.

The Recycling Today Media Group and its parent company, GIE Media Inc., consider Web and e-mail communication as fellow print media that have joined ink-on-paper methods as ways business-to-business communication is conducted.

We know from our readers’ feedback that our print products—Recycling Today, C&D Recycler, the Paper Recycling Markets Directory and the North American Scrap Metals Directory—are still valued and still scrutinized by readers.

We have also been grateful to be well received in the conference arena, as our second Paper Recycling Conference & Trade Show recently concluded with increased exhibitor participation, increased attendance, and a flurry of commitments to be back for next year’s show.

While print products and conferences provide two established ways for readers, advertisers and editors to communicate, we’re by no means neglecting the Internet’s role in our operations.

By the time readers receive this issue, a redesigned (and we feel greatly improved) www.RecyclingToday.com  Web site will be online. The site will allow visitors to search our archive of news stories much more effectively and to have access to additional exclusive online content. We will also increase the ways readers can “meet” each other through online bulletin boards and comment sections.

Also this summer, we’ll debut a new, brighter format for the e-newsletter that many of you are already receiving. (If you’re not, please let our Internet Editor Dan Sandoval know at dsandoval@RecyclingToday.com , and we’ll add you to the roster.) The timely news will remain, but it will be presented in a more graphically dynamic format.

We’ll continue to cover the paper recycling markets online, all the time at www.FibreMarketNews.com , presenting breaking news and current pricing at the Web site. And readers in the construction and demolition (C&D) recycling segment can find  information on that market at www.cdrecycler.com .

In their latest re-thinking of the situation, Internet observers are saying that existing successful companies are the ones now poised to take advantage of the fruits of the Internet.

We’d like to think that Recycling Today, along with our readers and advertisers in the industry, fit this scenario, and we invite you to subscribe to our e-newsletter and visit our redesigned Web site to survey the post-hype Internet landscape.