The (London) Gazette, the oldest surviving journal (which is one of the official journals of record of the British Government), was founded. Considering that many publication these days don’t even survive three point five years, the fact that a journal has survived in continuous publication for three and a half centuries is astounding. It’s longevity is probably aided by the fact that certain statutory notices in the UK are required to be published in official journals, but one has to be honest here — if it were to disappear, the notices would just shift to other journals.

Imagine the pride that Henry Muddiman, a name not even well known by many of today’s journalist students would have felt to know that a publication he began is still thriving three-hundred and fifty years later. With the web came the ability for just about anyone to start a new media publication, but how many of the new media publications started twenty years ago, a mere five years after Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first internet-based hypertext system, are still around today? Very few. The easier publishing gets, the more fleeting it seems to become, and even traditional newspapers are now going the way of the dodo.

Will today’s Supply Management publications stand the test of time? Even Purchasing Magazine, the longest running magazine that chronicled the world’s second oldest (or is it the third oldest) profession ceased publication five years ago. Will Sourcing Innovation and Spend Matters survive beyond the doctor and the prophet, the driving forces behind them? Only time will tell. But it really makes you stop and think about the long history that led up to the print revolution the internet launched.

To aid with your contemplations, here is the link to Another Day by November 7.