Plastics News will blanket NPE with news again this year, with daily reports from the show floor packed with breaking stories, features and photos.
We've produced daily newspapers at NPE since 1991. We were the new kid on the block back then in a crowded field in plastics trade publishing. But the effort solidified our reputation. Everyone in Chicago's McCormick Place seemed to be reading our 40-page dailies, and our fun, lively booth attracted huge crowds.
The venue this year is Orlando, Fla.'s Orange County Convention Center, but I still expect to see everyone reading our daily reports, and crowding our exhibit (Booth W5145) to get a copy.
Oh, and this year's Plastics News daily reports will be more than twice as thick as those 1991 newspapers.
Readers will have to make a special trip to our booth this year to get hard copies. (I promise it will be worth the visit.) But that's definitely not the only way to get the news. We'll also post digital editions, and distribute them to more than 100,000 global readers each day. And we'll post breaking news on our website, and send email alerts for major stories.
The trade publishing landscape has changed a lot in 27 years. But we prove our reputation at every NPE, and every trade show where we deliver daily issues. These days that includes the massive K show in Düsseldorf, Germany, and Plastimagen in Mexico City … and those dailies are in Spanish.
The American Society for Business Publication Editors (ASBPE), an organization that honors the best editorial work in business-to-business journalism, has honored Plastics News eight times for on-sight trade show coverage, and we'll win our ninth national award this year … we're a national finalist again, for our 2017 Fakuma trade fair dailies.
Our reporters and editors have decades of daily newspaper experience, so we enjoy the deadline pace. This year, once again, we will have the largest editorial team in the plastics trade press at NPE. So If you have news, make sure to let us know.
I remember how proud Bill Bregar and the rest of the Plastics News editorial team were of those first dailies in 1991, and how Chris Chrisman, our publisher; and Don Dasburg, our advertising director, bubbled with excitement. I'm looking forward to feeling that way again in 2018. We'll see you in Orlando.
Don Loepp is editor of Plastics News and author of "The Plastics Blog." Follow him on Twitter @donloepp.