Those of you who bother consulting the ‘About Us’ section on the menu to the left of this column will have realised that over the last four or so months there has been a number of changes in the roles of the editorial staffers.

After working as Editor for the last four years, I stepped down from that role to take over the editing of a proposed new Web Publications on-line technology magazine, The TechJournal. However, for a variety of reasons those staffing changes didn’t work out, so for the last month or so I have been back editing AutoSpeed full-time.

But things don’t stand still.

There are now going to be further changes, including an alteration in the publishing frequency of AutoSpeed. The proposal that AutoSpeed become a daily publication (an idea first mooted over 12 months ago) will now become a reality – in fact the change will occur within the next 6 weeks. Yes, that’s right – AutoSpeed will release a new article each day! Of course, if you’re happy looking at our new material on a weekly basis, you’ll be able to continue to do just that. Or, if you’d like a fill-up every day of the week – that’ll now be an option. Or anything in between.

That change in publishing frequency – and the resulting alteration in the way in which internal article production and organisation can be carried out – has meant that both Michael Knowling and I have moved to the roles of Major Contributors. Michael has also added to his list of responsibilities the task of answering your emails.

I will continue to write extensively for AutoSpeed, preparing technical and special features and photographing and writing about exciting cars. Michael and I will also be continuing our no-holds-barred coverage of new cars in our weekly reviews. However, additionally I’ll be turning my attentions elsewhere – writing in a wider variety of fields for a number of publishers – and The TechJournal will no longer go ahead.

As part of that new editorial process, we’ll be strengthening AutoSpeed’s content approach – after all, each and every article has to be a hard-hitter if it’s to stand on its own feet as the article of the day! Therefeore, the weekly columns that we’ve run for the last four years will be replaced by full-length articles, adopting the perspective that if the theme is strong enough for a column, then it should be able to be run as a more in-depth piece. I’d like to express my enormous gratitude to the jobs that Matt Cremer and Dave Rubie – who over the years have been consistent and worthy column contributors to AutoSpeed – have carried out.

Web Publication’s commitment to AutoSpeed is now stronger than ever before, and we are confident that the new behind-the-scenes systems will result in a better than ever stream of quality articles… each and every day of the week!

Another change that we will be implementing will be in the area of subscriptions. Those of you who have been subscribers since we first began will have no doubt realised that compared with new subscribers, you got a bit of a raw deal. After all, a subscriber joining today has access to over 1500 back issue articles (free of any extra charge!) whereas the first subscribers have effectively had to pay for everything as we’ve all gone alone. We’ll be looking at changing that subscription situation with regard to back-issue articles.

Finally, when we go to weekly issues you can also expect to see a major styling revamp of AutoSpeed. We’ll look fresher, be easier to use, and have implemented some longstanding reader requests (eg dates on articles!).

I have enjoyed my period as editor, and I thank you for your support.

Julian Edgar