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TWIST AND SHOUT
I recently received a midnight call from editor Rebecca Sherman. There is so much to love about Ms. Sherman, but not perhaps this late on a Sunday night. “He..ll..o…,” I queried tentatively, feigning sleep (for who would phone at such an hour except the bearer of bad news or a wrong number?) “We won! We won!” she exclaimed, voice dancing across the wires. Do you know Ms. Sherman? Not the type to be jumping up and down. I was alarmed. But she was bearing great news, calling from Folio: magazine’s black-tie awards banquet in New York City, where we’d been up for best shelter magazine. We won the gold. Simon says: Jump up and down!
This is a remarkable achievement for three reasons. First, D Home was competing against hundreds of national magazines, including those with much bigger budgets and longer track records. To give you an idea of the prestige, let’s put it this way: Last year, Condé Nast’s Vogue Living won in our category. It’s unprecedented for a local magazine to win at this level. How did this happen? One big reason is you—our reader and our advertiser. You’re our biggest motivation for getting up in the mornings. Second, this award affirmed our company’s chief ambition, which is to serve the reader first by providing excellent independent editorial content. In an era rife with freebie publications and giveaways, the companies who are producing real magazines like ours remain the jewels in the venerable crown of publishing. Our approach requires more time and money, but we believe in the long term that it’s you who benefits most. Finally, we won this award not just because of how well we cover stories, but because Dallas is the story. Your stylish houses, gardens, architecture, and design—as seen on our pages—made all those jaded New York media people pay attention. Congratulations to all of us.
I didn’t go straight to bed after Ms. Sherman’s phone call. Instead, I got out a yellow legal pad and pencil and started to make a list of the people who worked on D Home in 2006, whether it was photographing a house, loading magazines into racks at Tom Thumb, or writing (and rewriting and rewriting) cover lines. You’ll find a complete list here. Thanks to those dear and talented people and all of our wonderful advertisers and readers, it was a good night for jumping up and down. Enjoy this issue, and let me hear from you.
Christine Allison
Editor and Publisher
[email protected]
