1995
Tim McQuiston, Editor
Vermont Business Magazine


VMD: Who reads Vermont Business Magazine? Small business owners? Corporate representatives? Consumers? All of the above?

TM: Most readers are managerial and owners of larger businesses; we get a lot of subscribers who work in government as well. Government sometimes has a difficult time knowing what the left hand is doing between different agencies in the state government and local governments, and we publish a lot of statistical information as well as news features that appeal to them.

One of our advantages is that we are statewide, and we do economic reports in four corners of the state on a rotating basis.

VMD: Toward the end of the magazine, VBM has two sections: “Northern Vermont Business” and “Southern Vermont Business.” Do you see any real difference between the way business is conducted in different parts of the state, or is this a device to zero in geographically on particular companies?

TM: We break it down that way as a service to our readers, but there is absolutely a difference in the way business is conducted in different parts of the state. If you look at Bennington, it’s very New York- and Massachusetts-oriented. Brattleboro’s very Massachusetts- and New Hampshire-oriented. Chittenden County is surprisingly provincial. Even though it’s a small economic area, it’s self-contained with its own airport and all the services, so people don’t think about doing business too much outside Chittenden County. Whereas in the rest of the counties — in the rest of the state — the economy isn’t big enough and they don’t have a full slate of services. They have to go outside of themselves to do business, so when we do our features and statistics we keep that in mind.

VMD: If you had to summarize the mission of VBM in a sentence or two, what would it be?

TM: We want to be the business publication of record for Vermont. We are that, in fact, because we don’t have any competition. There are other business publications but they are not really news publications: they are oriented toward business service and written for a local audience. Essentially, they keep the local audience informed as to what the other businesses in their region are doing.

VMD: How do you feel your product differs from other Vermont business publications, including the Burlington Business Digest, Rutland Business Journal, “Business Monday” in the Burlington Free Press, and so on?

TM: We do investigative news, which the other ones don’t. Also, we publish a lot of statistics and our regional news surveys. I don’t think there is another news organization in the state which does its own surveys. We do the Vermont 100, and we have a top 100 employment guide as well. We do the original work, the original news, the original survey. We also reprint statistics from the state, bringing everything together so when you read VBM, you can understand the economy in the entire state in all the sectors.

VMD: What qualities do you look for in businesses (and business owners) that you profile?

TM: We run a monthly Q&A piece which profiles someone in the business world who’s not necessarily a business owner, but frequently an entrepreneur or a politician on occasion. We try to understand how this person started the business. Usually it’s someone who had an idea — we want to know how they made it into a profitable enterprise, and, in a larger way, what that means to other businesses in Vermont. It’s an essential question for us because we are always looking at economic development issues. For instance, Rich Tarrant at IDX. Here’s a guy who has a 100- million-dollar business in Vermont, writing software for the health care industry. How did that happen in Vermont, and where is he going with this? We try to follow these people.

VMD: Tell me a little about VBM’s “Summing Up” section that accompanies feature articles. Is reading the summary enough to understand what’s happening?

TM: If you are just going to read the “Summing Up” you are not getting all the information. Our typical feature articles will be about 2,000 words. Q&A will be about 3,000 words. That’s a lot of information, more information than people are used to reading. Even Newsweek doesn’t run articles that long. Our printing and production costs are held down because we print on newsprint in a tabloid size. If we printed on glossy we really would have to be concerned about how much space we have.

Readers came to us and said, “We don’t have time to look through and read every article when we first get it, or even read every article every month.” We added the “Summing Up” section so people can get what they want and monitor as much as their interest and time allow. They can choose. It has to be concise but it has to have hard information in it, too.

VMD: What’s new in your editorial calendar for 1995?

TM: We introduced a manufacturers’ directory last year, which is a separate publication. As far as the monthly, we have 14 issues a year, and we have a book of lists that includes statistics and employment data, business data, and information on separate businesses. Each month, we have several different focuses, as well as the regional reports.

One of the things we’ve done more and more is focus on health care and education. That has been driven a lot by the fact that those sectors of the economy have been growing. We’re focusing also on socially responsible businesses, which is a relatively new one for us. Business and the environment has always been one, safety and security is another. The legal part of business has always been a big issue, but it’s hard to get people to really talk about it.

VMD: Do you have more readers in Northern or Southern Vermont? Do you have many Canadian readers?

TM: There is a fair share because there’s a lot of cross-border trading between Vermont and Canada. A lot of that has to do with ethnicity. A lot of French-Canadians who are here may have lived in Vermont for several generations, but there’s still a connection — they will refer to themselves still as French. That big connection filters down to the business as well, so that’s why there is a big interest on both sides of the border. We don’t do too many stories that emanate from Quebec. A lot of the business is going that way so we do stories about that.

As far as the circulation is concerned, it’s pretty much split between Southern Vermont and Northern Vermont. That would probably surprise a lot of people because most of the population is up in Chittenden County. It goes back to the history of the magazine. It was started in Springfield, Vermont, then moved to Bellows Falls by the publisher of the Springfield daily newspaper, which does not exist anymore. It had a lot of interest in the southern part of the state, plus a lot of the bigger businesses are in the southern part of the state. They are looking for markets outside of their area. Chittenden County people are more provincial; they stay at home. So it is pretty split.

VMD: One thing we in the public relations business do is try to “get in the heads” of editors to better understand what they’re looking for. What types of stories are you looking for?

TM: I think it’s pretty much cut-and-dry. We want to find out what’s happening in business, and, less specifically, what’s happening with individuals. We’re looking at individuals in trying to understand the more general picture of a trend. So we don’t do too many straight business profiles on individuals unless they have to do with a subject we’re talking about. For instance, in the “Vermont 100” issue we’ll have a lot of profiles that have to do with businesses that are growing, businesses that are in certain industries that are growing in Vermont:

Editor's Note: This interview was conducted in winter 1994/95. The names and organizations were current as of that time.