Commentary: Event provided opportunity to showcase Springs

OK, so let me brag a little. Last weekend, our Book of Lists was selected as the best Book of Lists in the nation by Data Joe, our service provider for data collection for the book.

CSBJ along with Northern Colorado Business Report, Boulder County Business Report and Colorado Biz magazine hosted the Alliance of Area Business Publications summer conference in Denver last weekend.

It was the best attended AABP conference ever, with participants from literally around the world - ranging from the Los Angeles Business Journal to Crain's Chicago to Western Australia Business News. We all get together and share ideas about production, editorial, special sections and just about anything else that comes up for discussion.

One session for publishers benchmarked profitability and revenue of different size business journals and compared revenue with other print media.

National business magazine revenue is up 3.1 percent year-to- date compared to 2006. Daily newspaper print ad revenue was down 6.4 percent during the first quarter of 2007, but online revenue was up 22.3 percent and now accounts for 7.1 percent of total newspaper ad revenue.

It was refreshing to discover that local business journal revenue was up 6.7 percent during the first quarter of this year compared to last.

As you would expect, there was a lot of discussion about Internet ad sales and where we are going with the Internet. Just as I get this newspaper thing figured out the Internet comes along.

People said that TV was going to be the demise of radio. Well, radio had to re-think itself and today radio is as strong as it ever has been. I think the same thing will happen to print. Newspapers won't be going away any time soon.

In fact, I think online products will complement the traditional newspaper media outlets. It speeds things up. Our newsroom is much busier than before the CSBJ daily e-mail was launched. I think internet products such as the CSBJ Golf Blog can enhance the community.

Our Golf Blog provides a forum for the league members to interact, give some good-natured ribbing and stay in touch.

Maybe I am old fashioned, but I still answer voice mail before e- mails and have thought about trying to boycott e-mail for a day. I tried but it didn't work. And since many of you get the CSBJ daily e- mail, I guess it would be hypocritical of me to try a day with out e- mailing anyone or reading e-mail.

Anyway, back to the conference. Our Economic Development Corp. and our convention and visitors bureau (Experience Colorado Springs at Pikes Peak) were sponsors, along with various other business organizations from around the state. Mike Kazmierski, the CEO of our EDC, was unable to attend the awards banquet Saturday night so I stood in for him and talked about our region and the many accolades we have received.

In my first sentence, I said: "Mike isn't able to be with us tonight, he is probably having dinner with one of your primary employers." This received a few chuckles.

Since we tend to compete a tad with metro Denver, I was glad to see our EDC stepping up to the plate. The Metro Denver Chamber/EDC did sponsor a cocktail reception, but our EDC had much more of a presence.

Oh, and Matt Toledo, publisher of the Los Angeles Business Journal, thanks our EDC for the advertising it is placing in his Book of Lists and the events our EDC is sponsoring.

I think our EDC gets it. Mike has reported that lead generation from the Southern California ads has been good.

Now if all the business journal publishers that were at the conference would only go back and write a column about how great the Springs is for businesses it would be a real coup - yeah, right.

Lon Matejczyk is publisher of the Colorado Springs Business Journal.

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