It’s hard to believe yet another year has come to a close, and we’re stepping so quickly into a new one. Here at the Chronicle we’ve been eagerly anticipating 2008 for a variety of reasons, including the excitement that an Olympic year brings, and for the fresh start of January, when we set resolutions and establish new goals.

Throughout 2007, we’ve spent time planning and preparing for some changes to the magazine—many of you have already provided rave reviews of our switch to color—and as you flip through this week’s issue you might notice a few.

For years, many, many readers have asked us to increase the readability of the magazine. So this week we’ve taken their suggestion to heart and increased the point size across the board, so whether you’re reading the latest update to the Olympic equestrian venue in Hong Kong (p. 8), the feature article on amateur dressage rider Ann Romney, wife of presidential candidate Mitt Romney (p. 26), or scanning the results of the Greensboro Classic or Conyers Fall Classic horse shows (p. 20), the information will be easier to read.

And speaking of horse show results, the time has come for us to take a difficult but important step in the evolution of the Chronicle. Beginning with this issue, we’ll only be publishing the horse show champions and reserves, with the exception of those competitions that are accompanied by a news report.

For the past decade, the exponential growth of equestrian sports, especially horse shows, has required us to devote more and more space to results at the expense of articles and photographs. With the advent of the Internet, however, many horse show results are posted online, often in real time or nearly so, either on specialized websites or on those provided by the horse shows. So by the time the results are published here, many of you have already seen them elsewhere.

Therefore, we’re going to take that extra space we’ll be saving and pack the magazine full of additional news and feature articles, photographs and we’ll be introducing a variety of new departments throughout the year.

Like many of you, I first noticed the Chronicle because my name was published in the results (the 1977 Foxdale Farm Horse Show). But after subscribing, I found that the magazine offered me much more than simply a page for my scrapbook. I read about my idols in show jumping, I was introduced to intriguing new riders and horses in other sports, and I began to soak up information from training articles to horse care topics. In fact, much of my early education in horsemanship came from these pages.
 
So much has changed since then, however. When I first started working here in 1987 we didn’t have computers or fax machines or cell phones. Information technology has dramatically altered the way we live our daily lives, from how we communicate with family and friends, to how we drive our cars and where we find the news.

It’s important that the Chronicle evolves as well, but I know it’s vital that the magazine retain the tradition that we’ve all grown to love and appreciate. We’ll do our best to balance these missions as the magazine moves into its eighth decade.

I hope you’ll join us in celebrating the New Year and that you’ll enjoy the exciting new features in these pages during 2008. And, as always, I welcome your feedback, because we can’t move forward without you.

Tricia Booker