James Breiner, a former editor and publisher at American City Business Journals, writes about the lessons he learned at the company.
Breiner writes, “Actually, my first mentor at American City Business Journals was Carole Williams, who was publisher of Business First of Columbus. She hired me to be the editor.
“I came from the city’s large daily paper, where an issue had been some mistrust between the publisher and the newsroom. I decided that Carole should get no surprises; I would keep her informed of big stories we were working on while still protecting our sources.
“Our business journalism was aggressive. We did an investigative piece on how a major bank was working with state officials to move hundreds of state employees to a vacant office building some 50 miles away. It so happened that this would have rescued the bank from a bad loan. The chairman of the chamber of commerce, who should have opposed the move, was on the bank’s board and thus had a conflict of interest.
“I had let Carole know the story was coming. She knew it would be controversial. All she wanted from me was assurance that our sources were solid and trustworthy. The published story caused an uproar at the bank, which was our biggest advertiser. They pulled all their ads. And of course this upset our own sales staff.
“Carole’s approach to all this was to say that in the short term, we would suffer some, but we had many other advertisers. If we had pulled our punches on the story, word would have gotten around. It would have hurt our most important asset, our credibility.”
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