Next year will see many changes

Vol. 2, No. 1.The masthead to the lower left of this column says it all. It’s hard to believe that we’re starting our second volume, hence our second year, of publication.
This newspaper was born into as intense a competitive environment as an entrepreneur could imagine. And, like its competitors, The Northern Colorado Business Report was greeted somewhat skeptically by a community admittedly hungry for business news but waiting to see which of the three upstart startups would survive.
But this paper has survived – nay, thrived – during its first year of existence, which seemed to fly by as quick as an Intermountain Color deadline.
All in all, it’s been a remarkable year. We’ve worked hard to bring you, the reader, the most comprehensive business news possible, with aggressive reporting, in-depth analysis, useful data and first-class design. Indeed, we won five journalism awards for editorial and design excellence for our first three issues alone.
And we’ve adjusted things as we’ve gone along. After our first issue, we jumped circulation from 15,000 to 17,000 to meet demand. We added the Colorado communities of Longmont and Brighton to our core coverage area, and we expanded into Southern Wyoming to take advantage of and report on the increasing business ties between Northern Colorado and those cities.
We’ve added features to the newspaper, including a recurring article looking at small-business strategies for success, a health-care news column and the statistically driven On Industry.
And in January, we added a third section to our paper to provide you with even more business news and analysis.
Early on, we launched a World Wide Web page and three business news spots on radio.
Those are just a few of the things we’ve done in our first year to weave ourselves into the fabric of the Northern Front Range community, and while we’re proud of what we’ve done, we find ourselves with no time to congratulate ourselves on our accomplishments, no time to relish our profitability, no time to reflect on the past.
Instead, we’re swimming in new ideas for this newspaper, ideas that will cement our position as the provider of business news along the Northern Front Range.
Here are a few examples of improvements, additions and changes we’ll be making to the pages of The Business Report and beyond:
n The Business Report on CD-ROM. Through a cooperative relationship with QuickInfo Corp., all articles from The Business Report’s startup in October and into the future will be available on QuickInfo’s database, which is sold to libraries, newspapers, attorneys, etc. Articles can be searched by subject, name, author, etc.
This database also includes articles from The Denver Business Journal and The Boulder County Business Report. It’s updated bimonthly and is available for $150 for the current version, or $795 for a one-year subscription, complete with six updates. Call (303) 683-0206 to subscribe. It saves you the hassle of leafing through old back issues.
n The Board of Editorial Advisers. We’re creating this body to help us better serve the business community, and to enable us to better gauge the mood of business leaders. At least 100 business leaders from throughout the Northern Front Range will be asked to serve.
We’ll poll them occasionally on issues of the day and publish those results in The Business Report. We also might ask members to write guest columns.
More importantly, however, we’ll gather them 10 at a time every other month or so to solicit their opinions on our newspaper. Are we covering certain industries adquately? What else should we be doing? What are our failings vs. successes? This is one of the only ways we have to gauge the opinions of the business community, and I look forward to working with all of the board members.
If you’d like to serve, please give me a call at the number below.
n The Eye. This column gives us a chance to write about those little things that often don’t make it into our news stories. It’s a fun read, and we hope you like it.
n Nationwide databases. The Business Report has signed an agreement that will make our news stories available on databases nationwide, including Nexis, Business Dateline, DataTimes, Dialog and others. This means that it’ll be easier for someone across the country to access our stories and learn about this market.
Many more changes are planned for the days, months and years ahead. You’ll see these changes and learn very quickly our credo: Always improve.
Always, always, always.Christopher Wood can be reached at (970) 221-5400, 356-1683, (800) 440-3506 or via e-mail at ncbr@aol.com. The Business Report’s World Wide Web page is at http://www.ncbr.com.
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