We nearly made it to 50

This Editor's Note appeared in the final print issue of S Weekly, dated September 30, 2018

This magazine was born on June 30, 1969. The world was a very different place back then, and the magazine — then called Kaleidoscope — was totally different to S Weekly. It looked quite serious, with no colour photos and no celebrity interviews. Kaleidoscope became Student Weekly which became S Weekly — the magazine and its team have always developed and adapted the content to fit with the times. And now, we change again.

This is the final issue of S Weekly.

Education is changing, and we must too. Learning isn’t done only from textbooks any more. The biggest collection of information and learning tools in the world is online and accessible through your phone. Words are good but words plus audio plus video is better. Learning and engaging with English content is increasingly done on the Internet, so it becomes more challenging for magazines like this to justify their existence.

I keep hearing the phrase “Young people don’t read anymore,” which isn’t true. They just read on a different medium. We’ll still write stories, and we post news online — with vocabulary and audio support — every day. Bangkok Post Learning was launched as part of the main newspaper’s website in 2010 and is updated several times per day. It’s a great place to practise your English.

Thank you to the S Weekly team, past and present, who worked so hard to create the best English learning publication in Thailand (In Asia? In the world?) And thank you, the readers, for choosing us as a way to improve your English, or just as a way to relax on a Sunday. Thank you also to the teachers who forced your students to read the magazine as homework!

Come visit us at our new home, online at www.bangkokpost.com/learning as we move forward together.

Gary Boyle

Editor, S Weekly