After almost forty years, the Rangers News, once regularly billed as Britain's most popular football club newspaper, is to cease publication.
It's the end of an era, but more importantly, it's the beginning of a new one.
A new Rangers Monthly will replace the News, and although we've had a few hints as to what it will contain, we're about to embark on a voyage of discovery.
It might surprise some Rangers fans, but Celtic showed the way when it came to official club newspapers. As a youngster it used to irritate me that my Celtic-minded pal could buy the Celtic View while there was nothing on offer from Rangers for me.
It took a while for Rangers to respond, but eventually the Rangers News was born, and in its heyday, it was a top-selling football publication.
Much water has flowed down the Clyde since then of course, and Rangers, under new ownership, has opted to launch a club magazine with a new look and hopefully a new style, but what should a Rangers magazine do to win over, and hold on to, supporters of varying ages who have long-since abandoned the bland Rangers News?
The new Rangers Monthly should make it a priority to seek out Rangers supporters from far and near and ask them about their experiences of following the club, and not shirk from publishing the good with the not so good.
For younger readers, a regular colour poster of a player seems like a fairly obvious inclusion, but if the magazine is to have a long-term future, it will need to have some substance between its covers.
It may be a dry subject for many fans, but a section about the club's history would certainly be popular with a minority of supporters.
It need not be detailed accounts of matches from olden times; it could be about the background to how the club made its way in the world, why it moved grounds, how it struggled to survive and why it became the sporting flagbearer for Protestant Scotland.
The club has been running from its history for too long, and this new magazine could be an opportunity to take a valuable trip down memory lane. We should investigate, debate and embrace our history. It's not 'baggage' - it's real life.
We should ask club historian, David Mason, to contribute, but more than that, we should entertain guest columnists to broaden out the debate - and they need not always be Rangers fans.
Inevitably, the magazine will conduct interviews with players and backroom staff, but it should go further afield and ask searching questions of politicians, academics and writers.
This new venture is about a major Scottish sporting institution. It needs to contain views from within the Rangers Family, but it should also seek views about the Rangers Family from those who know it, but are not part of it. We are surely a big enough club to invite comment from the wider world.
This new magazine, while being avidly pro-Rangers, could become a respected and worthwhile blatt if it positions itself as a publication at ease in the modern world instead of looking forever inward.
The Rangers Monthly, under new management, is effectively a clean sheet of paper on which to signal a new direction for Rangers.
Let it do just that, but while I expect it to argue the Rangers cause passionately when the need arises, let it also invite articulate and respected critics and outsiders to give their observations and opinions.
I know that our club has many enemies, and they already use the media to full advantage, but the new Rangers Monthly must never be burdened with a term like 'Pravda'. It must never be a blatant propaganda sheet.
Let it be about Rangers first, second and third, but let's leave the door open for an opinion from left field.
The magazine will be better for it, and in the long run, so will we.
It's the end of an era, but more importantly, it's the beginning of a new one.
A new Rangers Monthly will replace the News, and although we've had a few hints as to what it will contain, we're about to embark on a voyage of discovery.
It might surprise some Rangers fans, but Celtic showed the way when it came to official club newspapers. As a youngster it used to irritate me that my Celtic-minded pal could buy the Celtic View while there was nothing on offer from Rangers for me.
It took a while for Rangers to respond, but eventually the Rangers News was born, and in its heyday, it was a top-selling football publication.
Much water has flowed down the Clyde since then of course, and Rangers, under new ownership, has opted to launch a club magazine with a new look and hopefully a new style, but what should a Rangers magazine do to win over, and hold on to, supporters of varying ages who have long-since abandoned the bland Rangers News?
The new Rangers Monthly should make it a priority to seek out Rangers supporters from far and near and ask them about their experiences of following the club, and not shirk from publishing the good with the not so good.
For younger readers, a regular colour poster of a player seems like a fairly obvious inclusion, but if the magazine is to have a long-term future, it will need to have some substance between its covers.
It may be a dry subject for many fans, but a section about the club's history would certainly be popular with a minority of supporters.
It need not be detailed accounts of matches from olden times; it could be about the background to how the club made its way in the world, why it moved grounds, how it struggled to survive and why it became the sporting flagbearer for Protestant Scotland.
The club has been running from its history for too long, and this new magazine could be an opportunity to take a valuable trip down memory lane. We should investigate, debate and embrace our history. It's not 'baggage' - it's real life.
We should ask club historian, David Mason, to contribute, but more than that, we should entertain guest columnists to broaden out the debate - and they need not always be Rangers fans.
Inevitably, the magazine will conduct interviews with players and backroom staff, but it should go further afield and ask searching questions of politicians, academics and writers.
This new venture is about a major Scottish sporting institution. It needs to contain views from within the Rangers Family, but it should also seek views about the Rangers Family from those who know it, but are not part of it. We are surely a big enough club to invite comment from the wider world.
This new magazine, while being avidly pro-Rangers, could become a respected and worthwhile blatt if it positions itself as a publication at ease in the modern world instead of looking forever inward.
The Rangers Monthly, under new management, is effectively a clean sheet of paper on which to signal a new direction for Rangers.
Let it do just that, but while I expect it to argue the Rangers cause passionately when the need arises, let it also invite articulate and respected critics and outsiders to give their observations and opinions.
I know that our club has many enemies, and they already use the media to full advantage, but the new Rangers Monthly must never be burdened with a term like 'Pravda'. It must never be a blatant propaganda sheet.
Let it be about Rangers first, second and third, but let's leave the door open for an opinion from left field.
The magazine will be better for it, and in the long run, so will we.