PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Oops, I Did It Again

Business leaders are this city’s greatest resource.

It’s kind of shocking that Dallas, of all places, is one of the few major cities in America that doesn’t have a business magazine. Our company tried to publish one years ago, but we didn’t do it right. We didn’t properly think through the focus, frequency, or our targeted audience.

Since then we’ve learned a thing or two. Today we publish very successful niche publications covering home, design, real estate, medicine, beauty, and dining. And, this fall, we will launch a magazine dedicated exclusively to fashion. We do this because a region as big as Dallas-Fort Worth isn’t only composed of neighborhoods and suburbs, but also of communities of interest. Our editors know these communities, and they’re passionate about them. Because of this passion, our niche magazines connect in a way a general interest publication like D Magazine never could.

There’s no reason for us to enter into a conversation unless we can improve it. The conversation is already happening; these communities are already engaged in it. What our magazines do is to help raise its level.

Dallas is a business town, and a business town is a place of invention and innovation. People aren’t here for the beaches and mountains. They’re here for opportunity and challenge.

For their business news, they can always turn to the Dallas Morning News or the Dallas Business Journal. But we’ve found in our conversations with business leaders around the city that reportage, while good and necessary, is not enough. There’s a hunger for the kind of journalism that only a business magazine can provide. Magazine journalism provides context, perspective, a sense of style, and a healthy dose of well-reasoned bias that takes a reader beyond the news into the heart of the matter.

So we’ve decided to re-enter the fray. This month we’re launching our new business magazine called DallasCEO—a name that conveys precisely for whom we’re writing. We are targeting entrepreneurs and business leaders who make ideas happen.

These people are Dallas’ greatest resource. They are the custodians of our intellectual capital. They are a community of interest, but they don’t think of themselves that way. They are very focused people, but focus breeds isolation. A magazine can break into that isolation and say, “Hey, here’s somebody you need to know.” Or, “Here’s information that could help you.”

We think this magazine means more than good business sense for our company. We think it’s also essential for our city. Because of a lot of factors—consolidation, globalization, the loss of our banks, the politicalization of municipal government, the movement out of downtown—business has somehow become untethered from the city. The interests of one are no longer tied directly to the interests of the other.

A business magazine, no matter how good we make it, won’t change any of that. But it can start a conversation. It can steal a moment of a busy person’s time to spark an idea, add a dimension—or maybe, just maybe, refocus attention on the city we’re all still engaged in building.