The changing nature of how people access information is big news these days.

Google, itself a phenomenon of this new information age, recently paid $1.65 billion to acquire YouTube.com, a popular video-sharing site. Time magazine heralded the Web 2.0 movement—in which online content is generated and shared by the public, a la YouTube—by declaring "You" to be its Person of the Year. And shopping on the Internet topped $100 billion for the first time in 2006.

Whether it's new hardware—from iPods, to more prevalent wireless networks, to satellite radio to bulked-up cell phones—or new software—from GoogleEarth, to Wikipedia, to the proliferation of blogware and podcasts—the means of accessing and distributing information is growing exponentially.

Traditional media companies, from your daily newspaper to Business Insurance, are scrambling to keep up with the pace of change. We are doing this not only for economic reasons but also to ensure we are keeping up with the needs of our readers: delivering what you want, the way you want to receive it.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of BI and just as today looks very different from 1967, tomorrow will be something else entirely. To ensure we continue to meet your needs as subscribers, I would love to hear from you to let us know how we are doing, and how we might improve.

BI has undergone a variety of adaptations over the years. First published as a biweekly newspaper, we went weekly in 1980, halving the publishing cycle to keep up with readers' need to get news and information more quickly.

BI launched its Web site in 1996 in the early days of the World Wide Web to satisfy the needs of those early adopter subscribers who were exploring this new world beyond e-mail and AOL. In 2000, we recognized that more was needed than simply republishing the weekly newspaper in a new, online format, and began publishing a daily news update online. Once again, the publishing cycle had shortened, going from weekly to daily.

In 2004, BI recognized the need to go beyond a single daily online news update and began publishing news online throughout the day, as it happened. Once again, the publishing cycle grew shorter still.

Today, BI continues to publish news online as it happens, and uses e-mail technology to push the customized news that readers request to their inboxes. BI offers a growing variety of online-only content, including comprehensive and exclusive directories and rankings of industry vendors, webinars on current risk and benefits management topics, online discussion forums for peer-to-peer information exchange, online conference reports and show dailies, and more. In addition to new content, BI.com is accessible in new ways, from mobile and handheld device browsers to RSS feeds to, in the future, digital editions of the weekly newspaper.

If you are not aware of all of the above resources and tools, all of which are available at no charge to subscribers, I would encourage you to grab your mailing label and register online at www.BusinessInsurance.com. It's free, fast and will unlock a world of information I believe will be of interest to you.

Whether you are already familiar with BI.com or are exploring it anew, I would like to hear from you on how we can meet your information needs as we mark our 40th anniversary. Is there information or data you want or need that is not readily available? Are there tools you need to better manage your information? Do you need new tools that allow you to share information and opinions? Or are there ways you would like BI.com's existing information and tools to improve?

Please drop me a note to let us know: pwinston@businessinsurance.com.