Media News

How an ACBJ paper started a newsletter 25 years ago

January 19, 2025

Posted by Chris Roush

James Breiner

James Breiner, the former publisher of the Baltimore Business Journal, writes about how he started a newsletter in 2000.

Breiner writes, “People told me how much they liked the newsletter. It gave them empowering information directly in their in-box. It was personal, from me, the publisher. It felt real, genuine, trustworthy.

“Dozens asked to be added to the list. I paid my teenage son to comb through our annual Book of Lists, which contained thousands of businesses, and harvest any email addresses.

“At the time, spam was still just a canned meat product; emailing people without their explicit permission was not illegal. I don’t remember getting any complaints. Compliance came later.

“My list grew to about 4,000, and it crashed our parent company’s email system once or twice. The chairman noticed. Was this a glitch or was this an opportunity?

“Later that year, the company began offering all the publishers in the 40 cities served by American City their own daily news update. The subject line of these emails contained the name of the local publisher. The goal, Bradbury recalled, was to make it feel like a personal communication, direct from the publisher to the recipient.”

Read more here.

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