The Second First Anniversary

Newswise, we’re fine; but
weaning advertisers from
bad habits takes tough love

Holy cow. This is the first anniversary of my acquisition of the San Diego Metropolitan, a milestone of survival composed of modest triumphs and two fistfuls of frustrations.

    Every publication has been a relief - no different from running a daily, as we did for years - and each has brought more journalistic joy than we anticipated.

    The last one, the August edition, was a bombshell in the commercial real estate business, and we hear more than one brokerage is fuming over how we had the temerity to report that Jason Hughes was the most successful tenants' rep in San Diego’s largest office-leasing market.

    Be patient. Someday your competitors may complain about all the attention accorded to you. (This isn’t the first time competitors of cover subjects objected, and it won’t be the last. How do you think the executives of Trizec/Hahn or Mission Valley Center feel today to see Gene Kemp on the current cover?)

    If the rivals of every story subject used economic retribution to settle the score, i.e., never advertised again, then indeed the score would be settled. There would be no publication. And by extension, there would be no open journalism in America, just a bunch of press releases in manila folders that nobody would read.

    No, putting up with the frustration of seeing a rival on the cover today is worth it in the long run if your patience means preserving a service that educates the business public, because an educated public is the kind you want using your business. Better to concentrate on doing your business better, or advertising your business more, rather than beheading the bearer of bad news.

    Serious journalism is frustrating. It is less a frustration to most serious journalists than it is to serious publishers who are trying to package the whole thing into a business that serves the educable masses and survives the vagaries of a few individuals. Compared to publishers, most good journalists have it easy because they are insulated from much of the pressure of raising the revenue for their own salaries.

    I am not like most.

    A career-long journalist-employee who's turned into a journalist-publisher, I am insulated no longer. I’m the real, raw thing, the business owner, raising the salary for dozens of employees and contractors, and then raising a little more for my own family that includes two toddlers. Unlike most corporate-employee publishers, I can still report and write. And I’m still painfully honest, a habit that has served me well and served more than a few San Diego readers over the last quarter-century.

    But let's back up to this second first-anniversary stuff before I raise another finger on these fistfuls of frustrations.

    The San Diego Metropolitan was established in October 1985, so the October '86 edition was its very first anniversary. I closed escrow on the publication on July 30, 1996, walking through the doors July 31 as the August edition from the old publisher was being distributed. September 1996 then was my first edition, when I explained in these pages what I'd done, where I'd been and where we were going with good luck and hard work. So this is my first anniversary edition, but the Metropolitan's second first-anniversary edition. Coincidentally, this edition also marks the completion of 12 years of continuous publication of the Metropolitan. Next month begins Volume 13.

    Our first edition last year was a big milestone, reintroducing a half-dozen or so accomplished business and civic affairs writers who'd been missing from the San Diego scene for a little while, but not forgotten, among them former San Diego Tribune business editor Janet Lowe, humorist-historian Herb Lockwood, arts critic John Willett, urban affairs reporter Lynne Carrier and one Brage Golding, who began writing for me just before I quit the Daily Transcript and who thought his writing career had been stunted when I left. Even Judy Witty kicked in an article.

    Deciding weeks in advance to put John Moores on the inaugural cover and hitting the stands as the Padres battled for the National League West pennant was a stroke of genius. It was Editor Tim McClain's genius, as were his and Ron Donoho's stories on Moores' high-tech businesses, led by Peregrine Systems on Del Mar Heights. It was a scoop then and still hasn't been rewritten by anyone else.

    It was a milestone when, a few weeks later, Donoho was hired as San Diego Magazine's managing editor.

    The October 1996 edition with the big spread on San Diego’s water wars was later declared by the County Water Authority as the most comprehensive package on San Diego regional water politics ever published. It hasn't been exceeded.

    The November edition featured Juanita Brooks and McClain's story on criminal defense lawyers that won the San Diego County Bar Association's top prize for magazine journalism during this past Law Day observance. We also introduced Darts and Letters, our letters column, in order to relieve the flood of pent-up mail we'd received, mostly congratulating us for the transformation of the magazine. Neil Morgan and Lou Wolfsheimer chimed in. One reader wrote there was "not much remarkable" about the rag.

    The November edition also included a house ad pointing out the contradictory circulation claims of two of our competitors, the Business Journal and Transcript, which, even when combined, don’t publish half the number of copies we do.

    December featured cover girl Lynelle Berkey on retailing, and it hit the stands the very week she quit her job running Saks Fifth Avenue in Fashion Valley to take a senior vice presidency at the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce. Modestly newsy stuff. This was the edition that also lamented the retirement of City Attorney John Witt and upbraided his successor, Casey Gwinn, for not being his predecessor. Witt's own column was introduced.

    Those first four editions - that’s all we published under the new ownership in 1996 - won so many awards at the annual Society of Professional Journalists banquet that had we entered a whole year’s worth of publications, as our competitors did, our pro rata share may have swept the show.

    We turned the magazine sideways in January 1997 for "Future Visions," an annual economic analysis and tradition that dates back to the early days of the publication. Even the Downtown San Diego Partnership was aghast when we suggested that high-tech and biotech could find more exciting, less expensive homes in Downtown San Diego than in the Golden Triangle. The editorial content, the San Diego economic analyses, were so thorough that other publications' annual economic reports looked downright pedestrian.

    We published the first artist's rendering, David Linton's, of what a John Moores Field would look like in Centre City East last January.

    In February we put Irwin Jacobs on the cover one week before the Qualcomm Stadium deal was revealed. We reported Anne Evans' ascendancy to the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve Branch of Los Angeles and her lament for how the megabanks treat San Diego in a story that still has not been reported elsewhere. Talk about a scoop. Annie Evans chairs the Federal Reserve, and still no word of it in the U-T, BJ, Transcript or anywhere else. That also was the month we resumed ranking and qualifying local banks and reintroduced Denise Carabet, the Business Journal's founding editor, to mainstream San Diego business journalism. (No banker has threatened to pull his advertising yet.)

    With similar pride, in March, we brought Transcript and Business Journal veteran Libby Brydolf out of premature retirement with Stephen Baum's "Absolute Power," including his power to pull the headquarters of the proposed Enova/Pacific Enterprises merger out of Downtown. That was the month Chris Alan of ElectriCiti admitted to learning something about technology from reading the Metropolitan, and we began broadcasting the Daily Business Report during morning and afternoon drive times on X-BACH Classical 540-AM Stereo. March also marked the last edition of City Magazine, a five-edition mistake by a millionaire Bonita publisher who almost scuttled my acquisition of the Metropolitan last year. (Metropolitan founder/seller Sean Reily assured me that rivals would come and go.)

    In April, Patti Roscoe became the cover knock-out, John Fowler became lionized, Oak Industries came back to town, Rich Brady questioned our fashion sense, and another Transcript veteran, Pam Wilson, with the ink on her Bar exam still damp, asked and answered, "How much should your lawyer charge?"

    In May we proved we’re not raving, abusive capitalists by putting labor boss Jerry Butkiewicz on the cover. (Has anyone yet told the story of Joe Francis' departure after a 14-year career as the AFL-CIO's local boss?) We sponsored the Tribute to Small Business Awards Luncheon for the SBA and the Chamber, and we promoted the Centre City East Association's EVA Awards. We continued our campaign on "Good and Bad Banks," arguing for local banking when possible, and this time almost lost some bank advertisers, except the disgruntled ones hadn't yet placed any advertising to pull. McClain's piece on General Instrument's Bob Rast as the bird-dog of HDTV, direct to you from Sorrento Mesa, was another local scoop. Now here's a milestone: At San Diego National Bank's annual media forum, Business Journal Publisher Ted Owen allowed as how the Metropolitan "just keeps getting better." Think he reads that closely?

    By May, by request, we had added U.S. Postal Service delivery of the Metropolitan to every member of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, all top two executives of all San Diego members of UCSD Connect, all members of the Building Industry Association of San Diego County, all members of the Downtown San Diego Partnership, and all top two executives of virtually every publicly traded corporation and bank in San Diego County.

    In June, for my favorite cover, we proved that beautiful women aren’t all pencil-thin and 25 years old. We sponsored the YWCA's 18th annual Tribute to Women and Industry, donated more than $1,800 to the program, published Larry Edwards' insightful piece on Dennis Conner's newest quest for the Cup, ran with Brage Golding's charming first essay on his daughter the mayor, and, for good health, sponsored the first Qualcomm Cross Country Run/Hike at Mission Trails Regional Park.

    In July, we were so filled with high-tech computerese you'd think we were Computer Edge. Featuring cover boy Lee Stein in his new virtual reincarnation, we also introduced sandiegometro.com as the deepest database of San Diego business information to go online on the World Wide Web in years. That's the month our masthead changed to reflect the synergies of the magazine, our radio and our online products as the San Diego Metropolitan Magazine & Daily Business Report. Janet Lowe also discovered Allen Paulson, the buyer of Las Vegas' Riviera Hotel, working off of High Bluff Drive in July; Libby Brydolf figured out how father/bosses fire their employee/children, and Denise Carabet explained why businesses fire their banks.

    And then last month, completing our first year of business, we did the spread on "The Lords of Leasing" and inaugurated what will become routinely intense reporting of biocommerce businesses in San Diego. Our 10th Annual Best of Downtown series of August is followed by Mission Valley this month and the Golden Triangle next.

    And all the while, the best-read feature has been San Diego Scene, the newsiest scoop-filled column in the publication, a team effort by a bunch of reporters who used to write the Transcript's "Local Scene" column when it was a great column, circa 1974 to 1995.

    Which brings us to a milestone coincidental with the completion of my first year of business, at which time I sold 10 percent of what was 100 percent ownership of Metro San Diego Communications, Inc., the corporation that owns San Diego Metropolitan Magazine & Daily Business Report, sandiegometro.com and The Guide to Downtown San Diego. The buyer is John G. Davies, who underpaid $100,000 for the 10 percent privilege. Davies is Governor Wilson's judicial appointments secretary, a regent of the University of California, of counsel in the law firm of Allen, Matkins, Leck, Gamble & Mallory, a director of Winfield Industries, a trustee of the UC San Diego Foundation and the Scripps Research Institute, and a former director of Imed, Ivac and Fisher Scientific Group. He chaired the San Diego Planning Commission for Mayors Wilson and Hedgecock, and presided over the Centre City Development Corp. for Mayor O'Connor.

    He's also a generous donor to the Old Globe Theatre, where his father, Lowell Davies, presided for about 35 years. Lowell Davies became an accomplished attorney, but early in his life served as E.W. Scripps' secretary and lived at Scripps' Miramar Ranch. It was Scripps who encouraged Lowell Davies to further his education that led to a career in the law.

    San Diego has produced no public servant more honorable than Lowell Davies' son John, and I can think of no honor greater than welcoming him as a partner. John Davies says he is investing in the Metropolitan because "it is the highest quality print medium in San Diego." Very nice. UC regents do read well. Paid subscribers invest $20 a year for the same reason.

    And that brings me full-circle to my fistfuls of frustrations. When Davies bought his 10 percent, Editor McClain earned his first 5 percent, leaving me with 85 percent of the company. We’re all dyed-in-the-wool San Diegans, oriented to the public good and fascinated with the power to do good that rests within these pages. We publish the largest-circulation business publication in San Diego with the largest, most experienced team of San Diego business journalists, period. Not even the Union-Tribune can boast more business journalists who've worked in San Diego longer. We believe an educated public is more productive. With private enterprise comprising two-thirds of the economy, we’re convinced that business is under-covered in the press.

    If an advertiser wants to drop us, or not renew, because we’ve told the truth about his more successful competitor, so be it. We will not be cowed.

    Nor will we relent with our advertisers and our advertising prospects when we see them misled by our competitors. The Metropolitan is not only the largest-circulation business publication in San Diego, but the only one that is 100 percent owned and operated by honorable San Diegans.

    The Transcript is managed by a statistics professor in Chicago and an executive in Detroit, both of whom enjoy experimenting with the World Wide Web much more than sweating to get out a newspaper for business people in distant San Diego. I know, I used to try to persuade them not to slash the newsroom budget further, as fellow editors Tim McClain and Janet Lowe also tried unsuccessfully.

    The principal owner of the Business Journal, according to the Transcript, is a Kansas City real estate developer who pleaded guilty last year to a federal criminal charge - having repeatedly maintained his innocence after being indicted on multiple counts in an IRS office-space bid-rigging scheme. I mean, the nerve of this man, Larry Bridges, allowing his company to accept money from San Diego advertisers, producing only one-fourth of the circulation of the San Diego Metropolitan, charging more than the Metropolitan, and living in Kansas City! What’s the problem? Regional patriotism is not a hallmark of this Business Journal chain.

    Ted Owen, publisher of the Business Journal, is just a loyal, well-compensated employee of the company led by the character in Kansas City. Owen accepts advertising from the Temecula Chamber of Commerce encouraging San Diegans to relocate their businesses to Riverside County, while he sits on the board of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp., pledged to retain and relocate businesses to San Diego. This is less than patriotic to San Diego.

    We present these facts in a civilized fashion, thoughtfully and somewhat regretfully at the end of a long column, not with a blaring front-page headline. We’ve decided not to tolerate a conspiracy that misleads and misdirects advertisers into purchasing ads in the business media owned by people who do not hold San Diego’s best interests at heart. They don’t even live here.

    To prospective advertisers and their agents who still don’t get it, we’ll keep educating you, and maybe we’ll write about how savvy people make their advertising decisions. The "Best and Worst Marketing Agencies" is scheduled for November.

    To the hundreds of advertisers and tens of thousands of readers who've made our first year a real milestone and who continue to make San Diego a stimulating, productive place to live and work, God willing, we’ll all be here in 20 years.

    Thank you very much.