I was down this road a little over a year ago with Maricopa, Arizona, and it not wanting to pay the ME anywhere decent, as I nosed around. (Set aside that the co-owner sent me a Walgreens clerk type standard two page application form as part of the initial round of the interview and potential hiring process [no, really!] and you lost me.)
I had forgotten that a certain newspaper in the Metromess had gone this same route, and I believe pre-COVID. But, a chance to move back into the Metromess itself, if other thingswere OK.
Well, this position was for an assistant editor. Which I found out means staff writer-plus, really. Then, we eventually got to potential pay. And an "-ish" at the end of what was discussed made me realize that the position was being "sold." Of course; part of the D Mag stable.
And, they did hire somebody else, which is fine, because I don't need to be paid in exposure-plus, along with a possibility of graduating to D Mag itself. (Say hi to Jim Schutze for me.) I think, per what the gist of things were, a generational talent was OK with exposure-plus pay.
Does the newbie get a cut of the advertorial stuff you're running, too? (Looking at the PDF version of the mag, there's more than one piece.) Dunno if that would be happening were Wick still alive.
And, no paywall on the monthly mags? And, wasting print pages with a month's worth of crime logs, even if this area of the Metromess is low-crime (not counting state-level or federal-level fraud cases, since that involves money.) I clicked more than half a dozen individual stories and no paywall there, either; D Mag doesn't, either, I think. Of course, magazines are a bit diff.
That said, I'm not sure we should call this a mag. Unlike Maricopa, both Park Cities People and Preston Hollow People (there, you're named) are in tabloid format, and I figure are as likely to be printed on newsprint as magazine slick.
As for content, other than already noted? They do a "person of the year" issue in January. ONE tabloid page, and that's it. Counting photos. Text is only half the page.
Wow.
Even if they had more money, and better website management, I'm not sure I'd want to be there.
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Basically, they sort of remind me of a lot of Colorado papers in the heart of the Rockies and the start of the Western Slope: A real estate mag with a few pages of other newspaper stuff as fishwrap. Now, People has more non-real estate ads, tis true; the resemblance isn't total. But, sort of? At least in my book, yes.
