Jerry Sullivan is editor of the Orange County Business Journal. He directs the paper’s coverage and layout and oversees a team of award-winning reporters. He also oversees the paper’s website.
Sullivan has been editor since July 2011. Before that, he was editor and publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a community newspaper serving Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts, for more than 10 years.
Sullivan also spent three years as editor of California Apparel News and Water Wear Magazine, and the 1997 year as managing editor of the Business Journal. He also worked for World Trade Magazine, Adweek and the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.
The Business Journal, founded in 1978, is part of a company that also owns the Los Angeles Business Journal, the San Diego Business Journal, and the San Fernando Valley Business Journal.
Sullivan, a graduate of Marquette University, spoke by email with Talking Biz News about his job. What follows is an edited transcript.
How did you get interested in journalism?
I had a natural affinity for language, and wanted a job where merit would stand out clearly and excellence would earn an individual the right to operate with a minimum of supervision.
This is your third stint at the business journal. What makes you keep coming back?
The fascinating, stereotype-defying, and intellectually engaged landscape of Orange County’s business community.
What’s a typical day like for a business journal editor?
A cascading series of choices.
Explain the strategy for the print publication versus your online strategy.
There is no “versus.” The goal is integration of the strengths of each of the formats. I could go on for some length, but anyone who is truly interested should spend a month reading our weekly edition and getting our enews service to their phone, laptop or desktop. You can sign up at ocbj.com.
What’s been the biggest change for the business journal in the past five years?
Our staff has grown by about 20 percent.
How big are events for the publication?
They are significant as subjects of content and periodic promptings to focus on a given industry sector. Those are useful editorial considerations independent of the matter of revenue, which is in the hands of the sales side of our operation.
Other than the Orange County Register and the Los Angeles Times, who are your biggest competitors?
We take the view that we have no ongoing direct competitors but regard everyone as an indirect or potential competitor, or a competitor on a certain day or story. We simply presume someone is competing with us somewhere — in print or digitally — so we had better outwork them.
How do you set your coverage apart from those competitors?
We know our local market and its context.
You founded a publication. How did that experience help you be an editor today?
In two key ways: 1.) I gained a sincere respect for readers as the absolute core asset of a publication. Ads, circulation, clout, prestige — nothing happens unless enough readers count on you as a trustworthy source of news and analysis. 2) I attracted enough attention to learn what it feels like to have someone else report and write about my business — and experienced first-hand the frustration and damage that can come from errors of fact or context.
Where would you like to see the paper improve editorially?
In our use of data analytics in advance of story assignments.
