How a business publication was created

Tom Fenton, the publisher of El Paso Inc., writes about the creation of the business news publication on its 20th anniversary.

Fenton writes, “After looking hard at that model and at business journals across the United States, we decided there was not enough demand in El Paso for a strictly business-to-business publication.

“So we folded some elements of a city magazine into the business journal concept and coupled that with a clear and distinctive editorial agenda.

“At that time El Paso was stumbling over a very negative self-image. The ‘crabs in a bucket’ analogy was widespread: When one tried to climb out, others would pull it down. And so it seemed to happen whenever El Paso tried to change its image.

“Our thinking in creating El Paso Inc. was that we could provide intelligence for the business community while celebrating the successes of our citizens. And we thought that in doing so, we might inspire others. Too, we thought we could turn a weekly publication frequency to an advantage because it would allow time to go into more depth on news stories. The battle to get out a daily newspaper doesn’t allow much time for the story behind the story and what it all means.

“We thought too that doing so would distinguish El Paso Inc. from the competition and avoid failure by being superfluous.”

Read more here.