And why not? It works for us.
I can’t decide if the plan, which Dallas’ Only Daily Newspaper announced this week, is a sign of desperation because they’re doing something we’ve been doing since 1991, or if the paper’s management finally realizes that Wamre is a genius and they should copy everything he does.
The News said it will throw 200,000 one-section daily papers, called Briefing, on the porches of non-subscribers in an attempt to bolster its declining circulation. It’s targeting households with incomes of $75,000 who are 25-49 and skew toward women.
This is, more or less, what Rick came up with in 1991 when we started the magazine. His thinking was that, in the long run, we’d make more money by guaranteeing advertisers specific circulation and demographic numbers than we could make in the short term by charging for circulation. Which is exactly what has happened.
Rick was also smart enough to realize that our neighborhoods were an advertiser’s dream, areas that had long been underserved by mainstream media like The News and plastic surgery’s favorite local magazine. It’s no coincidence that the surge in neighborhood-style publications over the last couple of years parallels the decline in the mainstream media and its traditional methods of doing business.
One of my favorite stories (which I bore every person with who interviews for a job at the Advocate) is that Rick came to me with this idea nine months before we started and asked what I thought. "It’ll never work," I said, once again proving who is the brains behind our operation.
