I think I know how Joe Biden felt when he was forced to accept the fate that he shouldn’t run for re-election after a long career in public service, and after putting his heart and soul into his job as commander in chief.

Disheartened. Unappreciated.

It sucked.

Depending on your political slant, you may not describe the day he addressed the nation to say he was stepping aside using the same words I did in my opening. But, as it happened, I got news about my own future very soon after his speech.

The news—Carrier Management will no longer publish a print edition.

That sucks.

I should use this space in the same brave way that the soon-to-be former president delivered his news. That’s not me.

I should tell you how all the resources we poured into our publication will be redirected to strengthen our online content. And they will. We’re working on that.

But the truth is, the genesis of the economic decision was just that—an economic decision. The Wells Media executive team didn’t explain all the dollars and cents to me, but I know it reflects low levels of advertising spend directed to print products and ever-increasing printing and mailing costs. And my readers know that, too. So, I’m not going to sugarcoat the news. Carrier Management, the youngest of the Wells Media print publications, got the ax.

This is our last print edition. It would have been nice if it was our best and strongest. But my heart wasn’t in it.

In truth, it’s probably not quite as good as our first print edition, published way back in 2013. (Who remembers the solid gold cover?) And it might not even as good as the one we sent out last quarter. We were knee-deep in finishing up that one when we got the news, and we put an all-out effort into making it shine. Since then, we have been brainstorming about what’s to come—online only. More of our exclusive online feature content will be there. More in-depth analysis of carrier financial results. More packages of content on topics of interest. And potentially on the horizon: access to new compilations of the data that exists within our content and other data sources—aggregated in easy-to-use formats.

We’re committed to making carriermanagement.com an even more attractive destination for insurance carrier leaders—and leaders in the making.

But I couldn’t move forward to appreciate it before I got a little bit of grumbling out of the way. I loved the look and feel of the glossy print editions, and I thought ours were special. They represent some of the best work the Carrier Management team has ever done.

I’ll miss them. But I’ll get over it.

I have always been direct in these opening notes. I didn’t want my closing opening note to be any different.

Now, it’s onward to the new mission.