The D CEO magazine brand of business journalism

Christine Perez is managing editor of D CEO magazine in Dallas and founding editor of its D Real Estate Daily news site.

Prior to joining D, she was a longtime commercial real estate reporter for the Dallas Business Journal and served as a columnist for National Real Estate Investor magazine. Before that she worked for various business publications in Kansas City and Minneapolis. She’s also the author of a book on the Corrigans, a notable real estate family in Dallas.

Perez has been recognized with national and regional journalism awards—two for a report on former HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, which sparked a federal investigation. Most recently she earned a bronze award in the “Best Body of Work by a Single Writer” category in AABP’s 2013 Editorial Excellence Awards.

D CEO won five gold awards at the AAPB conference last weekend in Nashville, including best magazine, best feature and best profile.

Talking Biz News asked Perez about the magazine’s approach to business journalism. Here is what she told us:

So how does a city magazine go about covering business in a way that’s unique to other media in its market? At D CEO, the business title of D Magazine Partners in Dallas, we do it by focusing in-depth on top North Texas executives. Through our intimate storytelling approach, readers learn how the experiences of these c-level execs help shape their leadership strategies—and the companies they run.

In the current issue, for example, Steve Jacob writes about Bert Marshall, the new CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, and how he’s bringing a public-health sensibility to the post. Readers get solid information on the company, as well as rich details about Marshall’s upbringing as the son of a nomadic oil executive:

Marshall vividly recalls the shantytowns outside the Libyan capital of Tripoli, a landscape dominated by clapboard lean-to tin-roof dwellings. It was his first glimpse of abject poverty. Such early experiences “and travel inevitably shape you,” he says. As a result, he adds, “I am a firm believer in diversity. I embrace different cultures and people.”

A member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Marshall himself is a member of a minority group. His great-great grandmother was named Green Feather. Although he’s only 1/64th Native American, his unbroken lineage gives him Cherokee voting rights. So it’s not so surprising that an Indian headdress and shield are mounted on the wall of his 15th-floor office in Richardson.

In another story, D CEO Executive Editor Glenn Hunter gives readers an inside look at two well-known families (one of which is notoriously press-shy) that own iconic Dallas shopping centers. He writes about their intense rivalry, as they battle for affluent consumers and luxury tenants like Valentino, Versace, Dior and Chanel.

A third feature is a collection of shorter profiles on all 48 Dallas area Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year contenders, plus Ross Perot and Ross Perot Jr., who were presented with a special award as part of the program. For this story, I was able to spend more than four hours with the Perots. We didn’t have enough space in D CEO for some of the fun nuggets that emerged during the interview—like stories about the time young Ross Jr. and his father were on a U.S. military submarine, trying to outrun the Russians; or how Ross Sr. managed to get out of paying our lunch bill—so we ran a separate story in D Magazine.

Along with three or four longer (2,500- to 4,000-word) features, each issue of D CEO includes regular industry columns (commercial real estate, law, and technology; healthcare will launch in October), plus a number of standing features — Breakfast With D CEO, You Need to Know, My Office, and Meet the CEO — as well as a back-page Bottom Line column written by Steve Kaskovich, a business editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Launched in 2006, D CEO comes out nine times a year (up from eight in 2012); we combine the Jan/Feb, May/June, and July/August issues. We may go up to 10 at some point, but nine is a schedule that seems to work well for everyone for now.

We have a lean editorial staff — essentially, two editors and an editorial assistant. Regular columnists write the industry columns; for other stories, we rely on a stable of talented freelancers. A team of three interns helps with fact-checking and writing briefs for our news sites, D Real Estate Daily and D Healthcare Daily, another important part of our business media platform.

D CEO is not afraid to invest time, resources, or pages to achieve desired results. Features may take three or four or even six months to pull together. For a report on U.S. Trade Representative and former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, we flew the writer to Washington, D.C. I’m heading to California next month to interview a Dallas CEO who has a number of business interests there.

That being said, Glenn and I have learned to work within budgetary constraints — as has our art director, Hamilton Hedrick, whose creativity and impact cannot be overstated.

In the May/June issue, for example, we profiled ReelFX CEO Steve O’Brien. Hamilton came up with the idea of incorporating characters from an upcoming ReelFX movie into the photos, taken by our outstanding in-house photographer, Elizabeth Lavin. (I especially love the shot of the turkeys photocopying their “butts.”)

For a story on the CEO of a sports memorabilia company, Hamilton recruited two other employees to give their boss a Gatorade-style trading card “shower.” And for a feature on our Top Financial Executives Awards program, which could easily have veered into “boring” territory, Hamilton and Elizabeth scouted estate sales and found an old desk and adding machine, and built the creative concept around that.

The resulting photos, shot at our office, are dramatic — and cohesive. Overall, D CEO strives for a luxury magazine feel.

Along with our magazine and two news verticals, D CEO also hosts a number of events, most of which are invite-only, to help preserve the quality of the networking experience and to align with our mission of connecting c-level execs.

One key strategy: D CEO intentionally practices collective ambition. Our entire group (editorial, art, production, sales, audience development, and marketing) meets as a team every other week to share information and ideas. We try to take a collaborative approach to everything we do, while at the same time respecting the sales-editorial divide and other boundaries.

D CEO began holding the biweekly meetings about 18 months ago, and the results from rowing in the same direction are now being realized. Ad sales are up significantly in 2013, we’re continuing to add staff, and we’ve launched several new initiatives — with others in the works.

We think there’s a real need for a magazine like D CEO in Dallas, not only because of the region’s size and prominence, but because it’s a top corporate relocation market, with new executives moving in on a regular basis. D CEO helps them get to know the local leadership class.

Our readers tell us they view the magazine as a peer. It all comes back to the connecting and the storytelling. We’re fortunate to be in an area where there’s no shortage of interesting executives and companies to cover.