Future's in our collective hands

This week the Morning Advertiser​ reaches a significant landmark — its 500th edition since it moved to William Reed Business Media. A lot like the wider world of pubs, there have been massive changes in the eight or so years I've been working on the title.

Everybody in our sector is having to work that bit harder nowadays to earn their corn. It applies in spades to the world of the trade press. The magazine has strained every sinew to become the publication this great industry of ours deserves.

It's been an interesting journey — and one that is far from complete. We try to look at the over-arching "issues" in a calm and constructive fashion. On occasion, we will challenge a bank, utility company or a large pub company on behalf of our licensee readers. But we have an increasing focus on business-building, best practice and encouraging licensees to move themselves up the retail standards curve.

Our biggest area of interest — passion actually, by a mile — is successful retailing. We have consciously become less "political" — critical of the Government — in the belief that our biggest challenge is galvanising the trade in terms of meeting the consumer challenge, and shouting at the Government, although always fun, is a waste of energy.

We have developed our outreach work so our industry's best licensees can meet and learn from each other. We now organise 12 business full-day business conferences a year for growth areas of the trade: for example, our MA200 club for the UK's best managed multiples meets three times a year to keep up-to-date with new ideas, get fresh inspiration and network.

In the past few weeks we've asked dozens of our industry contacts to tell us frankly what they think about the role, value and progress of the magazine as it reaches this week's milestone. We print their responses in this week's edition.

For those looking for a bit of the slightly more negative, I refer you to Enterprise boss Ted Tuppen, who thinks our approach immature at times a couple of years ago and Numis analyst Douglas Jack who thinks our website forums give too much air-time to pubco critics.

Otherwise, the message was incredibly positive, with many key industry figures and contacts confirming they think we have been heading in entirely the right direction. I'd like to thank all those who took time out to provide us with feedback.

We have lots of great ideas about how we can develop the magazine to do an even better job in supporting and championing this great industry and we'll be telling you about them in the coming months.

We believe that, despite the many external challenges, the future of the Great British Pub very much belongs in our collective hands. We promise to do our utmost to play the most positive role we can for the next 500 editions and beyond.