Going The Distance by covering older businesses

Wailin Wong is the editor of The Distance, an online magazine and podcast that spotlight longevity in business by publishing monthly in-depth profiles of businesses that are at least 25 years old.

Wong previously covered consumer technology and local start-ups for the Chicago Tribune and started her career at Dow Jones Newswires, reporting on Latin American financial markets from Buenos Aires and New York.

She is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and lives in Oak Park, Ill.

Wong spoke Wednesday by email with Talking Biz News about The Distance and its coverage of companies. What follows is an edited transcript.

How did the idea for The Distance come about?

Credit for the idea goes to Jason Fried, the founder and CEO of Basecamp, a Chicago-based project management software company. (Basecamp used to be known as 37signals, and Fried is well-known in the tech and entrepreneurial worlds.)

He was feeling fatigued by the glut of coverage of tech startups and newly minted founders/CEOs and wanted to read more about businesses and entrepreneurs on the other end of the age/experience spectrum, so he decided to start a publication to tell those stories. Jason and I met while I was covering the local technology scene for the Chicago Tribune, and he hired me to run this project.

How did you get the funding?

Basecamp funds the entire operation, including the podcast we just added a few months ago. I’m a Basecamp employee, but I have complete editorial independence. I choose the subjects for each month’s story and my reporting and writing are completely self-directed.

I should also point out that we don’t write about Basecamp customers. This kind of funding model is very unique. Essentially, Basecamp is paying for journalism around a subject that it simply finds interesting and worthwhile.

How scary was it to leave daily business journalism to do this?

It was definitely daunting to leave behind the relative comfort of a well-established outlet like the Chicago Tribune to start something from scratch, without all the structure and institutional backing I had been used to. At the same time, I was ready to get off the breaking news train and try my hand at crafting longer stories with a lot of focus.

I also knew that Basecamp cared deeply about this project and would bring its considerable resources to bear on it, so that felt very liberating and exciting. To be honest, life at a daily newspaper was scary in its own way, for reasons I probably don’t need to explain to this audience!

How do you find the companies you write about?

I often cold call or email businesses myself — this was the case with the Hala Kahiki, the World’s Largest Laundromat and a few others. I do get a lot of emails from business owners, and some of those messages have turned into stories. Readers also write me about interesting businesses or people in their hometowns or neighborhoods.

That’s how I found out about Ingrid Kosar, the inventor of the insulated pizza delivery bag. And every once in a while, a public relations person introduces me to a client, although I find that most of the businesses I write about don’t do much, if any, proactive PR.

What’s the process of getting them to talk to you for a story?

Business owners have most likely never heard of The Distance, unless they’re contacting me first, so I tend to do a lot of explaining. I tell them it’s an online magazine and podcast about longevity in business, and that I like to do in-depth stories that cover the history of their business, what they’ve learned from their decades of experience, and how their company/industry works.

I encourage them to check out the website. And I try to make it very clear from the beginning that I like to come in for several visits if possible, spending many hours with them and touring their factory/store/etc., and that the stories also require photos and audio. People are really generous with their time and very trusting. I remind myself all the time not to take that for granted.

You publish one story a month. What does that allow you to do with your subjects?

As I mentioned earlier, I like to spend as much time with the businesses as they’ll tolerate. Having a month to report a story allows me to go back for repeat visits, do additional research in between visits, ask follow-up questions and shoot photos.

Now that we’re doing a podcast, I have to make sure I’m getting enough good audio too, whether it’s the business owner relating an important anecdote or the sound of a machine running or other ambient noise. For the laundromat story, for example, I did the interviews with Tom and Mark Benson on separate weekday mornings, when the store was pretty quiet, but returned on a Wednesday pizza night and a Sunday afternoon to capture photos and audio of their busiest times.

Of course, it’s wonderfully luxurious to have time to sit down and write and revise. I mentioned that I work with two freelance editors. I like to give each of them a week to get back to me with their notes.

And since I’m the only person at Basecamp who’s dedicated full-time to The Distance (more on that later), I like to build in a lot of flexibility into the schedule for my colleagues who have primary responsibilities around Basecamp the product. My time and resources are kind of infinitely divisible when it comes to The Distance, but theirs aren’t, so I’m mindful of that.

You also have photos and videos for the stories. What do those add, and how do you staff that?

This is a good time to explain our editorial process, since I’m the only full-time person on The Distance. I already mentioned that the stories get edited by two different freelancers, one based in New York who’s more of a story editor, looking at high-level issues of structure, clarity and concision, and one based in Denver who handles the copyedits.

The photos are taken by Michael Berger, who does quality assurance and software testing at Basecamp. He enjoys photography as a hobby and takes amazing pictures, so he volunteered to help with The Distance. The videos were done by Shaun Hildner, Basecamp’s in-house video producer. We’ve transitioned from videos to doing a podcast, so now Shaun edits and produces the audio stories.

You’ll notice that every story comes with distinctive illustrations. Those are the work of Nate Otto, a Chicago artist who’s worked with Basecamp for a long time. You’ll see his illustrations on basecamp.com, too. And lastly, Mig Reyes is a designer at Basecamp who built thedistance.com and makes all the elements come together beautifully each month.

Having photos and video/audio for these stories really enriches the experience of learning about the businesses. I love that you can see what different machines look like or hear the voices of the business owners. With every story, I try to uncover something surprising or take readers into a place they wouldn’t otherwise visit or know about, so the visuals help immeasurably with that.

You added a podcast a few months ago. Why did you do that?

We believe there’s an audience out there that would rather listen to a nine-minute story than read a 2,300-word article. And we just thought it would be fun to try a podcast. A lot of Basecampers are avid podcast listeners and there was a lot of enthusiasm for experimenting with the medium. I’ve really enjoyed thinking about how to craft a story for the ear, and I love that the written and audio stories can bring out different angles of the reporting.

Have you ever thought of syndicating these stories to traditional business media that might be interested in them?

Yes, and in fact we do syndicate our stories to the Chicago Tribune’s Blue Sky Innovation. We’ve also had individual stories re-published by Quartz and Gizmodo. I’d love to explore even more opportunities in this vein for both our written stories and our podcast.

Why do you think business media ignore companies like these?

It’s not so much a deliberate snub as it is a function of how the news is produced and how traditional publications prioritize coverage. The businesses featured in The Distance are small, privately held and don’t tend to generate headlines. They’re just humming along, and their owners/founders aren’t actively seeking media coverage.

There’s no time peg or news peg. Of course, you do see stories about companies like these by reporters who cover small business or in local/community publications.

But for the most part, the media thrives on new stuff — product launches, fundraising rounds, executive hires, openings, closings. That’s the news business! And I love it. But there’s also room in the world for a publication like The Distance, which presents good reads about surprising or unexpected subjects in a very specific niche.

How did the name The Distance come about?

That was Jason’s idea! I am terrible at titles — and headlines, for that matter. (My husband has actually come up with a lot of The Distance’s headlines.) And thedistance.com was available, which is always important.

We were not inspired by the Cake song, although it is very catchy.