Thank you to the readers who’ve inquired why the publisher, who’s spent most of his career since the mid-1970s in San Diego’s newsrooms, has not been writing as much lately.

The answer is simple. The more time the publisher spends delivering services to advertisers, the less time he has to research and write. Good thing Editor Tim McClain runs a great news department, the reason most readers haven’t noticed that the publisher has been writing less.

Ladies and gentlemen, this edition marks the Metropolitan’s fifth anniversary under current ownership, and the next edition commences the San Diego Metropolitan’s 17th year in business. To those who thought we wouldn’t make it, especially those competitors who actually voiced such doubt to our own advertisers, shame on you.

This has not been easy. While we anticipated hard work, we didn’t bargain for this much. However, September marks the close of our 10th consecutive quarter since we pushed into the black. Revenue in the fifth year was 355 percent of what it was in 1996. And yet the first half of 2001 was as challenging as ever because of the slower economy exacerbated by an unpredicted energy crisis, 10 percent higher newsprint prices, 20 percent higher occupancy costs to stay in the same place, and what the 117-year-old trade publication Editor & Publisher described recently as one of the worst print advertising recessions in history.

That we’ve prevailed — hitting not just our five-year projection for sales, but also our 10-year projection, while coming close to our modest profit projections — is a testament to God, good luck, that hard work and the intelligence of advertisers who cannot afford to waste money.

We have maintained the Metropolitan as San Diego County’s largest-circulation business publication, which, at 50,000 audited copies exceeds the combined (audited and unaudited) circulations of San Diego’s three other business publications. About two-fifths of our circulation is delivered via the U.S. Postal Service, and that portion alone exceeds the total circulation of any of our business competitors. About 20,000 copies circulate south of Interstate 8, and 30,000 north. Some 2,500 copies now penetrate the business and political leadership of Baja California.

And still, our ad rates are cheaper than our competitors and our shelf life is longer. Such a deal.

Journalistically and competitively, we’ve taken a bevy of top honors from the Society of Professional Journalists and San Diego Press Club for print and online products. More importantly are the messages behind those awards. We’ve delivered enormous volumes of news and information on telecommunications, computer networking, software development, biosciences, education, transportation, maritime affairs, local government, infrastructure, real estate, the fine arts, hospitality, international trade, banking and finance — in short, all the important private and public enterprise that makes San Diego County work.

We do believe it is extremely important to concentrate editorially on private enterprise, which comprises two-thirds of our economy and is underserved by the general news media. We believe it’s extremely beneficial for high-tech San Diego to communicate with low-tech, and vice versa, for the boat hull sander to appreciate wireless data compression, for instance. This kind of cross-economic, cross-industrial and cross-cultural communication makes for a more intelligent community. Had North City techies better appreciated business south of Interstate 8, for instance, San Diego would not be so divided, traffic in the Golden Triangle would not be gridlocked and the public would not have been spending so much effort on urban renewal. We believe such “cross-sector” communication is a higher calling than segregating techies to talk only with techies while sucking in a few service providers to preach to the choir.

This cross-sector ethic also drives our increasing attention to business south of the U.S.-Mexico border.

During these recent recessionary months, we’ve learned to better appreciate the potential of our own ancillary services, sandiegometro.com, the Daily Business Report, “Heart of San Diego,” sandiego360.com, sandiego360.magazine, the Uptown Examiner and the North Park News. Likely, these will become greater growth sources for us in the years ahead. Give us a few more days to rewrite the business plan and then we’ll share the news and hope we underestimate ourselves over the next five years as much as the last.

Thanks for reading. Thank you for advertising. Thanks for giving the Metropolitan its second fifth anniversary on the eve of our 17th year.