I wouldn't hazard a guess as to what the catchphrase of the upcoming political campaign is going to be, but when it comes to the media and information business, it's pretty obvious:

It's the Web, stupid.

Virtually every media company has, in the past several months, made noise and news about "migrating" their properties online; earlier this year the venerable Time Inc. closed local bureaus of several of its magazines in order to devote more talent and resources to its online properties. Okay, so call us copycats: here at PW we've done the same thing—sort of. We haven't closed any bureaus and we're not taking anything away from the print magazine we've been publishing for over 130 years—but we're definitely working harder on our Web presence. You may or may not know, in fact, that we've done a total redesign, added breaking news stories, blogs and even podcasts. (Look for the first of the latter next week.) And—maybe most important of all—we've finally, thankfully, improved our search technology, so it's easier than ever to seek and find reviews, stories and information, both from the original (and thriving) print product and lots of stuff that's new to the Web.

It hasn't been easy—or painless. When people have stumbled onto the site and asked why we didn't announce its renovation more publicly, we've had to admit the truth: that the tech side of things was still struggling, and while from the very first day she took on the Web director job, PW deputy editor Karen Holt has been begging, borrowing and prying some great stories from a lot of places, there were too many glitches for us to direct people there proudly. But now, though we're hardly glitch-free, I'm outing us anyway: go there, right now, to see what we've done. (And please, don't remind me—the staff hasn't—that one of the first things I said when I got here two years ago was that we wouldn't have any blogs; we've got a half dozen of them, and they're some of the best things on the site.)

What are we trying to do with PublishersWeekly.com? Nothing much, just the same stuff we've always been doing, but more of it and faster and in an easier-to-read style. We're doing a lot of talking around here, in fact, about "owning" stories—like the terrific pieces Matt Thornton did on the Agassi book deal; he practically covered that auction in real time. One of my personal favorites, too, was the book-buying scam our bookselling editor Kevin Howell uncovered last week, the one that made Ingram stand up and take notice. And the bloggers from the bookroom staff: do you really want to know the truth about having all those books piling up around you? Are you sure you can handle the truth?

I don't usually write like this, I know, and I guess I'm risking my wise-guy reputation by being so, well, cheerleady. But, really, I mean it: just as I felt two years ago that we were going to make a real difference in the PW print product, we're on our way, now, to doing the same thing on the Web. So tell me what you think—but, please, don't just write about the tech problems. We know they're there. We're working on them.

Agree? Disagree? Tell us atwww.publishersweekly.com/saranelson