Chief Editor’s Message

I was honoured to be asked to take over the reins of the RECORDER from Penny Colton this summer. The RECORDER is an excellent publication that connects the Canadian geophysical community like no other.

My first task as the incoming Chief Editor is to thank Penny very much for her service to the RECORDER. Penny ran the RECORDER for the last two years, and devoted all of her energy to making sure that the RECORDER was always published on time, and was full of interesting articles. Additionally, Penny regularly took photos at CSEG events, and will hopefully continue to contribute them in the future. Great job, Penny! I have some big shoes to fill.

Going forwards, readers will see some changes in the RECORDER.

First, it is my goal to make it easier for CSEG members to ‘record’ their thoughts and opinions in the RECORDER, and I invite members to submit articles and brief letters for publication throughout the year to the Chief Editor’s email: editor@csegrecorder.com. When there is demand and space, we will publish a new “Letters to the Editor” section. Go ahead and take advantage. I particularly encourage CSEG members from outside of the Calgary area to become involved and submit articles and letters. To echo Rob Vestrum, Past President of the CSEG: the ‘C’ in CSEG stands for ‘Canadian’ not ‘Calgary’.

Unfortunately the finances of the CSEG are not immune to the current economic downturn, and are currently in rough shape. The RECORDER committee has done a great job of reducing the RECORDER costs over the last year. Highly observant regular readers may have noticed that the number of pages printed in each edition has been reduced to 48, and that the pages are now also fractionally thinner. I would particularly like to recognize our publisher, Bonnie Luft at The Printman, for sticking by us during this time. Bonnie is a true supporter of the CSEG, and deserves all of our thanks.

Despite these efforts, the RECORDER is losing money at an unsustainable rate, as shown in Figure 1. In large part, this is due to a decrease in advertising revenue. Further cost cuts are required, so starting September we are changing the publication frequency of the RECORDER from one edition a month to two editions every three months. This will reduce the total number of editions published each year from 10 to 7, and decrease our projected loss for the next 12 months by 30%.

Please encourage your companies, large or small, to sponsor the RECORDER, or to advertise in the RECORDER. They can contact Alyssa Middleton in the CSEG office for sponsorship and advertising options and rates (alyssa.middleton@cseg.ca). We need to turn this ship around before even more drastic and unwanted measures are forced upon us.