Editor’s Column: By Grant Spolander
If you’ve ever spent time around a toddler, you’ve probably witnessed the so-called Terrible Twos. Experts say the tantrums stem from young children trying to figure out their place in the world while lacking the communication skills to explain what they’re thinking. The result is an incoherent, wildly unreasonable little person whom you’re somehow expected to be endlessly patient with.
Well, guess what? 4WD Revolution turns two this month, and I’m about to ask you to do the same.
About six months ago, I wrote an editor’s column asking for your feedback. I wanted to know what you liked, what you didn’t and—most importantly—what direction you thought the magazine should take.
It took me weeks to reply to everyone. Not just because there were so many emails, but because I wanted to give each response the same level of thought that many of you had put into your feedback.
What surprised me wasn’t the number of responses. It was how similar they were.
A clear pattern began to emerge.
PATTERN RECOGNITION
Time and again, readers said they valued in-depth, well-researched articles that offered practical advice rather than superficial content. Many of you also told me you were collecting the magazines and keeping them on file as a reference.
That felt important somehow, but much like a two-year-old trying to explain why he absolutely must wear gumboots to bed, I couldn’t quite articulate why.
Then, one afternoon, it finally clicked.
This isn’t becoming a magazine.
It’s becoming a library.
That realisation changed things.
Readers aren’t simply reading 4WD Revolution. They’re using it as a reference. And that’s when I realised we’d created an unexpected problem.
A reference guide is only as good as its index. So, if the information you’re looking for is scattered across half a dozen back issues, it isn’t really a guide at all. It’s just a collection of magazines, and finding the answer becomes an exercise in frustration rather than a genuinely useful resource.
So I started asking a different question.
Not, “How do we build a better magazine?”
But rather…
“How do we build something that’s genuinely more useful?”
The answer, I think, is surprisingly simple.
Don’t build a magazine. Build a library.
After all, a magazine is something you read once. A library is something you can return to.
Caption: Over time, we’ll continue adding old and new features to their relevant categories, making it easier to find useful stories when researching a topic. But more than that, we want to include your experiences, too. If you’d like to contribute to a topic, get in touch with us here.
THE COMPOUND EFFECT
In practical terms, that means we’re moving away from producing dated PDF issues and towards publishing articles as they’re completed. Instead of waiting months for the next issue, you’ll receive new stories throughout the year. The best of them will be continually expanded, refined, and woven into dedicated topic guides which become more comprehensive with every update.
Over the coming months, you’ll start seeing that vision take shape. So rather than producing PDF magazines that slowly become yesterday’s news, I want us to build something that becomes more valuable with time.
Every new article, every reader contribution and every fresh piece of research should strengthen the articles that came before it.
I’ve been writing about 4x4s for almost 20 years, and in that time I’ve been constantly reminded of two things: how much I still have to learn, and that our collective knowledge is far greater than any one person’s.
That’s the future I want to build.
And if your emails and contributed stories are anything to go by, I have a feeling it’s one we’ll build together.
You can start by contacting us here.
