Editor
Delaware Business Times
As I mark the end of my first year at the helm of Delaware Business Times, I’m excited to reveal the fruits of our labors over the past few months.
Reaching your fingertips today is a reimagined print edition that should look a bit different than what our longtime readers are used to. We began a full-scale redesign of DBT earlier this year, in both its print edition and the workings of its online presence.
For print, we set out with the goal of creating a product that was comprehensive, easy to read and dedicated to business in Delaware. My goal was to create a newspaper that could be read cover-to-cover in about an hour if a reader so chose.
So, we have shortened stories and created info boxes and graphs to help quickly tell the stories for readers. Rest assured, while the print versions may be a quicker read, the lengthier versions of stories with more context, background, and insights that many readers have come to appreciate will continue to be posted online.
Our spotlight coverage of the various industries in Delaware will continue, changing in each of our 24 editions a year, and our cover stories will continue to have a larger, magazine-like presentation at the center of our paper. DBT-researched industry lists, business leads, event calendar, and personnel changes and career achievements will also continue to be a part of the newly designed print edition.
On the web, we relaunched DelawareBusinessTimes.com this past spring and have begun publishing high-quality, in-depth reports specifically for our subscribers, or “Insiders.” The number of our Insiders have grown rapidly over the past five months as more readers have come to find coverage of stories not being reported anywhere else.
Those subscribers are coming from the exploding number of our online readers. We nearly doubled our year-over-year web traffic last year and are on pace to smash last year’s record readership this year. We’ve achieved that exponential growth by focusing on news others aren’t and digging deeper into the stories they are telling, harnessing social media to expand our reach and seeking out stories big and small from all corners of the state.
We undertook this monthslong redesign of our print and web products because we believe in the importance of quality business coverage in the corporate capital of America.
The First State’s media ecosystem has seen dramatic changes in recent years, often driven by outside decision-makers and to the detriment of readers. While we have seen the pages of The News Journal thinning in recent years and most major state publications abandon their coverage of business, we believe there is ample opportunity and support for such work.
Our rapidly growing readership has also been matched by a publication-record haul in industry awards over the past year. I am proud to say that we were named one of the nine best independently owned business newspapers in America this year, and were recognized at the state, regional and national level for our coverage, editorials, and specialty publications.
As nice as all of those accolades and achievements are though, the most-important compliments have come from you.
I have heard nearly every week for the past year, from all corners of our state, how important it is that an outlet like DBT continues to report on the great work being done by Delaware businesses while also supporting their efforts to employ and build here. Some of the state’s most prominent builders, lawyers, scientists and politicians have told me that DBT has quickly become one of their must-read publications each week.
That sets a high bar for me and my team to live up to, but we’re excited to get to work and meet that goal over the next year and many more years to come.
Thanks for reading.
