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The first week of a new year is an important time for every business, and DPReview is no different. As we reflect on the past year and define our goals for 2018, I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself. Some of you might know me from occasional forum posts and comments—usually to explain a new site feature, or some new style of advert. My name is Scott Everett, and I’m DPReview’s new General Manager and Publisher, replacing Simon Joinson, who stepped down in October.
At its core, DPReview is a group of people. Those people are dedicated to investigating all of the latest developments in photographic imaging technology, and providing informed, unbiased analysis to our readers. We’ve been doing this in one way or another for almost 20 years; I joined DPReview in 2011, which feels like a long time ago, especially in such a fast-paced industry, but the site’s essential mission hasn’t changed in that time.
We are, of course, also a business. Traditionally, like most websites, DPReview has generated the majority of its income via conventional ‘banner’ advertising. But as advertisers increasingly move away from conventional ads and seek to position different types of content in as many channels as they can, we’ve faced an important question: how can we meet the needs of our advertisers while maintaining the trust of our readers?
Regular site visitors will have seen new kinds of content appearing on DPReview over the past couple of years—from long-form videos to occasional co-branded articles. Most of it has proven popular with our readers (thanks as always for the feedback), but we’re not going to rest on our laurels. And we are most definitely not going to compromise the high editorial standards that brought you here in the first place.
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| Simon Joinson, Barney Britton, and Allison Johnson listen politely as I attempt to explain something. |
You’ll see some changes on the site in 2018 and beyond. We are in the middle of automating many of the tests we perform on cameras and lenses (yes, we plan to bring back lens reviews), which we hope will increase the consistency of our product reviews, and hopefully decrease the amount of time that some of them take. We are also working hard to re-think the user experience of the site on both desktop and—perhaps more importantly—mobile.
In an era when countless blogs offer up half-baked opinions on new products within minutes of their launch, DPReview with our labor-intensive method of testing might seem like something of a dinosaur. But we’re OK with that.
While both the photography and publishing worlds have changed drastically since I bought my first digital camera (an Olympus E-1, if you were curious), DPReview in 2018 is what it always was: a website run by and for discerning photography and technology enthusiasts. And our readers are our most valuable asset. This site would not be what it is without the community of photographers that visit every day.
So hello, thank you for your support, and Happy New Year!
Scott Everett, Publisher and General Manager, DPReview.com
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
