Ten years doesn't seem very old. But when a new national credit union publication is started from scratch, at tremendous personal risk, and ends up being the publication you are holding in your hands today, 10 years old becomes a significant milestone.
C. U. Times, Inc. published its first issue of Credit Union Times on March 26, 1990. So happy birthday to us with this issue!
Much has changed over those 10 years and 511 consecutive weekly issues. Volume 1, Number 1 was 16 pages and mostly black and white with very little paid advertising. Today, the smallest weekly issues are 28 pages (soon to be 32) and have been as many as 104 pages in full color.
Paid subscriptions have increased from none to nearly 10,000. The printing process used is far more sophisticated. Weekly production is strictly high tech. Paper stock is top-of-the-line. Even the staff is all new (I am the only remaining staffer from 1990), and today there are more correspondents writing more stories about a credit union industry undergoing more changes than ever before.
What hasn't changed is the mission of this publication. It is stated on our page one masthead every week: "Weekly independent report on credit unions." The key word here is "independent."
Ten years ago, I felt that if Credit Union Times fulfilled its mission, readers could depend on it to obtain the most useful and interesting information, information that is completely unbiased, factual, objective, and timely. I still do!
That's our ongoing birthday present to readers.
