CRN named best tech magazine for second year in a row

It was with great pride that the CRN team accepted the award as 'Best Magazine' at the annual MasterCard IT Journalism Awards on Friday – scooping the category for the second year in a row.

It was a special win for me, having worked in print magazines over my entire publishing career. Over the past decade, I've seen print publishing disrupted like few other industries. I've watched the stature of magazines change. These days, magazines are often supporting players, whereas digital content is king.

This is true for CRN. Our digital platforms – www.techpartner.news and our daily email newsletter, Channelwire – are the central pillars of the CRN brand family. Our events, including the annual CRN Fast50 awards and this year's newly launched CRN Pipeline conference, represent a large and growing component of our business.

I remember when print had fewer competitors. Now print faces competition from myriad communication channels and publishers have to do more with less.  

I don't mind telling you that our strongest growth is across digital and events. Some publishers would focus on these high-growth areas and let the quality lapse on the printed magazine. We have not. If anything, we've redoubled our commitment to the magazine. I hope that is evident to those of you who subscribe to CRN in print. For those who, don't, you can apply for a free subscription here.

While other publications have seen declines in their quality, falls in their circulation and have cut back on their frequency, we have – if you'll excuse some tech corporate speak – doubled down on print. Hats off to my incredible art director Andrew Bennett, whose creative flair and single-minded pursuit of quality is a major factor in our back-to-back award wins. Of course my editorial team of deputy editor Tony Yoo, reporter Brendon Foye and newest recruit Samira Sarraf can pat themselves on the back, as can our trusted contributors, including Brad Howarth, Nate Cochrane, Sholto Macpherson, Justin Warren, Iain Ferguson and many more. And last but not least, CRN's tireless advertising team who drive the business to support such a quality product.

There are clear parallels between the disruption of the media industry and the rapid changes sweeping through the tech sector. In place of print, we could say 'on-premises'. Instead of websites, we'd talk about the cloud. Just as print magazines have gone from leading role to supporting player, many predict that on-premises IT will soon become the outlier, with public cloud as the default option.

But the cloud will not eradicate the need for on-prem infrastructure and perpetual licensing. Equally, there is a promising future for printed magazines in general and for CRN in particular. If you'll allow me to stretch the metaphor, we could talk about a "hybrid" publishing future.

CRN's print revenue is up. We continue to launch new brand extensions via the print magazine, such as our new CRN MVP program. The first place to read all the details on our annual CRN Fast50 awards will be the December issue of CRN. Major advertisers continue to turn to CRN to create custom guides distributed via the magazine.

It is hugely satisfying to be named 'Best Magazine', and I like to think it was no accident. This was the culmination of immense investment by the whole Nextmedia team so I'd like to thank them all for their ongoing commitment to the CRN brand, and to you for your loyal support.

Steven Kiernan is editor of CRN