Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Farewell

TODAY we put a ‘30’ on Infomat.

In the parlance of journalism, this is the traditional way of ending newspaper stories. In the case of Infomat, it is our way of saying farewell.

This is the last issue of a document that has a history of more than three decades at Statistics Canada.

Since 1973, Infomat has been a weekly summary of the economic and social news releases that were first published in The Daily, the Agency’s official release bulletin.

Until the mid-1990s, both were print documents, and they worked hand-in-glove. If you didn’t have time to read The Daily, you could catch up by subscribing to the weekly review in Infomat.

During the early 1990s, the golden years, Infomat had up to 1,600 subscribers. But then the Internet Age arrived, and with it, a whole new world.

Online product

In 1995, The Daily became an online product, with all its conveniences: electronic links to archived issues, research reports, information about survey programs, concepts, methodology and so on.

As more readers accessed The Daily electronically, fewer found the need for a weekly summary. Subscriptions to Infomat began a slow, steady decline.

Even the switch in February 2004 from a print document to today’s fully electronic format failed to staunch the loss.

As a result, the declining subscriber base no longer justifies producing the publication.

My thanks to three people in particular: Loui Massicotte, who designed this electronic format; Marie-Paule Robert, who translated and assembled the package every week; and Élaine Brassard, who did a marvellous job of typesetting.

Their efforts were instrumental in consistently making Infomat a high-quality product of which we could be proud.

John Flanders
Editor-in-Chief

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© 2004, 2005 Statistics Canada.