OUT FRONT Our Own Little Debutante

I HAVE AN ADMISSION TO MAKE.

If in another publication there is the deepest, most beguiling, most intrepid piece of journalism on one page, and across from it on the opposite page there is a collection of party pictures, my eye and my attention go directly to the party pictures. In a flash. I’ll get to the journalism, I tell myself. I hear my mind nagging me to get to the journalism, but-hold on, give me a second here-first I want to look at these pictures.

In my religion they call this the doctrine of human fallibility. I admit to being fallible. But not until Associate Publisher Deborah Holtschlag laid out her plans for D Scene did I realize how irrevocably fallible I am. The minute I saw it I was smitten. D Scene is our new publication-a 16-page magazine filled with nothing but party pictures, focusing on charity events that are the bastions of social activity in our region.

We publishers face a never-ending puzzle when it comes to deciding what to print. We must rely on instinct and fingertip judgment, what we see and what we distill from a thousand conversations a month. We also have to ask the age-old editorial questions, “What are people interested in? What does our audience want from us?” These may seem like fairly easy questions to answer-through surveys or focus groups or just by asking around.

But they’re not. Most people are like me-they’re not sure they’re interested in something until they see it right in front of their face.

I have no idea why I picked up Antonia Fraser’s new book on the “gunpowder plot.” because until I saw it in a bookstore, I had only the vaguest idea of what the gunpowder plot was. When I walked into the movie theater last year to see Apollo 13,1 had pretty much forgotten what Apollo 13 was. Both fascinated me, but if I had been asked beforehand in a focus group if I’d pay good money for the experience, the answer would have been no, because they were both off my persona] radar screen.

With D Scene, our eyes may be attracted to the colorful gowns and the faces of people we know, but these charity events should be on our radar screen because these people do so much to raise money for good causes.

For example, the 1996 Cattle Baron’s Ball raised a record S 1.05 million for cancer research projects in Dallas County. That’s just one event for one cause for one year.

So you can see why, when Deborah proposed the idea of D Scene to me last month, I wanted to launch it this month. Everyone else around here was smitten, too. The publication is full of the zest that characterizes the nation’s most active social scene.

D Scene, a biweekly that comes out on Thursdays, is available in select locations around Dallas and Fort Worth-places like salons, spas, gourmet shops, boutiques and the like-and it’s free.

The first issue is out and circulating right now. If you stumble on it in your doctor’s office or at select Borders Books or in the 100 or so other locations where it’s available, please let me know what you think about it. But first admit you’re fallible like me. If you aren’t, please don’t make a point of it. We party devotees are fairly sensitive.