Four niche publications step up

3 magazines, weekly paper are set to launch this spring

Four new publications are in the works for Triangle readers this year, all targeting niche audiences.

Two are magazines aimed at professional women, one is a quarterly magazine about the local commercial real estate industry and the fourth is a weekly community newspaper in Carrboro.

Despite the number of media outlets already operating in the market, the publishers of all four publications said they believe there is room for more.

They will be competing for advertising dollars with more established area magazines and newspapers, including The News & Observer, The Daily Tar Heel on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus, The Chapel Hill News, Carolina Woman and Metro Magazine.

"It seems to be an extremely media-saturated marketplace," said Brenda Larson, publisher of the weekly Cary News and Chapel Hill News, which are owned by The News & Observer Publishing Co.

"We all have our roles, certainly," Larson said. "It will be interesting to see what happens."

But Robert Dickson argued that it's the size and broad scope of some of the area's publications that leave an opening for these smaller niche products. Dickson is the publisher of the weekly Carrboro Citizen, which will distribute its inaugural issue on March 21.

"I think there are things that cannot be covered by a paper looking on from the outside," he said. "In my world, part of building a community is for a community to have its own newspaper that is about that community and that is from that community."

It's a risky time to start a new publication anywhere, with advertising revenues down and consumers who are time-crunched and saturated with 24-hour news.

Newspaper advertising dropped by 2.7 percent in the first nine months of 2006, according to the latest data available from industry research firm TNS Media Intelligence.

Advertisers are also stretching their advertising dollars over more media outlets, from online Web sites to cell phone promotions, said Mike Gatti, executive director of the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association.

"They're not spending less," he said. "They're shifting their spending."

But that could be good news for niche publications if they happen to be focusing on the right subset of people, Gatti added.

"If I'm a retailer and one of those target markets is mine, I'm going to definitely look at it," he said.

Still, these new magazines and newspapers will have to develop a track record before many advertisers are willing to take the risk, said Sheila Ogle, CEO of MRPP, a Cary media agency that buys advertising for clients.

"We would not be an inaugural advertiser in a publication unless it was an extremely good rate," she said.

But, if the content is good enough, the readers and the advertisers will come, Ogle said.

"We're very fickle because there are so many things out there competing for our time," she said. "We don't have the time to let it build. That first issue has really got to be good, and then they have to keep it good."

The population growth and the high education level of its citizens makes the Triangle more receptive to these niche publications, said Bernie Reeves, who over the past 25 years helped found three successful area publications: Spectator Weekly, Triangle Business Journal and Metro Magazine most recently in 1999.

"It doesn't just mean it has readers," he said. "It has many people who want to be writers and editors. ... But it's not a business for the faint-hearted." Reeves' own benchmark for measuring success is three years.

"If a publication can make it for three years without having to skip an issue or cut its press run, then at that three-year period there's a certain value that's been obtained. That means you've got a good chance."

And, niche publications are the in thing, said Jock Lauterer, lecturer and director of the Carolina Community Media Project at UNC-Chapel Hill.

"People now want publications that speak to them directly," he said. "They're not going to get news about what's going on at Weaver Street Market on CNN."

Still, no one thinks that all new publications will succeed.

"Most advertisers will not have the budget to do both women's magazines," Ogle said. "I think there's going to be room for Carolina Woman and probably one or the other, and it just depends on who's going to be out there with great editorial."