Zoo News Digest started out circa 1998 as a private mail out to friends who worked in the zoo world. At that time there were very few zoos which had websites and probably just as few newspapers which had an internet presence. Zoo people themselves, in the main, did not have personal computers and generally accessed through internet cafes.
As a zoo professional I have always been interested in what was happening in zoos, not just where I worked but in zoos right around the world. I was interested in everything about zoos rather than just conservation, breeding, education and research. I was interested in the advertising, staff hiring, firing and training, construction and demolition, edutainment and more. I was as interested in Elephants as I was in Gorillas. The breeding of mice and mealworms was as fascinating as reproduction in jellyfish.
Every time I had an internet connection I looked for news of zoos and read avidly. Learning something new was exciting.
One day I had come across around a dozen different zoo stories. I thought I would share these with zoo friends who I knew had email addresses. These were people I knew personally or were people I had actually met for the first time through and on the internet. They were zoo professionals too, as interested as myself though in the main more specialised. We had chatted on the internet, learned a little about each other and our families. We were all English speaking and so mainly hailed from the English speaking world.
I put together the links to zoo stories I had found along with a little bit of news about my family and friends and sent this out as an email to my 15 or so on-line zoo friends. It was very well recieved. Several of these forwarded the email to other friends they had in the zoo world. They emailed me back and asked that they be included in the next mail out. I had not till then thought about doing a second one. Undaunted, because I had actually enjoyed the research I produced another a week later. Within two weeks I had around 150 subscribers.
From then on it grew and grew and has been almost continually published every week since. Sometimes mailed out twice or even three times a week. There have seen several imitators appear since, even webpages which try to compare. The difference is Zoo News Digest is put together by a Zoo Professional for Zoo Professionals. It is now no longer just a set of links to zoo news stories but to zoo stories that interest people working in zoos. There are no 'name the baby tiger' links which are there for public viewing.
Today Zoo News Digest comments on Zoo News. As an independent publication it is no holds barred honest opinion by a zoo professional who is pro Good Zoo. I am in a position to criticise the bad zoos and draw the zoo worlds attention to bad zoo practice. I am not anti-zoo but I am anti bad zoo. I can say things that others cannot for fear of losing their jobs.
Zoo News Digest reaches more people in more zoos around the world, and more often than any other publication. The private email subscriber list reads like a Zoo Who's Who. There are Zoo Directors, Curators, Vets, Scientists as well as Keepers, Trainees and Students.
Although every issue of Zoo News Digest continues to be emailed out to subscribers it also now has a web presence in the form of a blog/
and on Facebook
both of which have some independent readership.
The Zoo News Digest can be quite outspoken and so has made a few enemies along the way. It is to be expected when one makes honest criticism.
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