In this issue

Things are about to change at Forty South publishing. Let me say immediately that everything is positive. The magazine itself is not changing, except for a cover design facelift and a small name change in keeping with a company-wide branding unification exercise.

Forty South Tasmania is losing nothing except its name, which is changing to Forty South. What it is gaining is a big brother. This is the major change, the seismic shift: hugely exciting and hugely intimidating in terms of scope, potential, and work required to implement it. We are about to build a major Tasmanian content portal on a high-end digital publishing platform.

The move became possible after Forty South Publishing successfully applied for a grant under the Australian Government’s Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund, administered by ACMA. The purpose of the grant is to support regional publishers to adapt to the digital age and compete in the evolving media environment.

Our new website will allow us to carry a great deal more content than we can in the pages of a quarterly magazine. It will be an online extension of the magazine, rather than a digital version of the magazine itself. It will be larger, but it will have the same values as the physical magazine: an essential place to go for anyone interested specifically in things Tasmanian, and generally in good writing and good photography delivered via informative and entertaining feature articles.

The web portal is now in the development phase with the hope of going live early in the second half of this year, a month or two after publication of the Winter issue, Number 97, of the magazine, an issue which will introduce our glossy new look.

And if you would like to be part of history, we are running a competition to find a cover image for that new-look Issue 97. Any high-resolution image, taken on a smartphone or digital camera, with a Tasmanian theme will be considered. The winner will receive $500. See p8 for more details.

Forty South Tasmania Magazine Description:

Tasmania has been described as the world's best-kept secret, but it's not our fault - we have been telling the world about Tasmania for over 20 years. Forty South Tasmania has been described as a lifestyle magazine with brains. It offers three things: interesting features about Australia's island state, good writing and stunning photography. The magazine is a household name in Tasmania, but also has many subscribers elsewhere - people who have visited this beautiful place and now read the magazine for a regular reminder of an extraordinary experience. Forty South Tasmania offers feature stories, and stunning photography, about Tasmanian places and people, tourism, history and lifestyle, and regular columns on Tasmanian food, wine, arts and culture.