Hello!
Did you hear? The Advocate is 35 years old.
For 27 years, our founder Rick Wamre wrote a monthly letter from the publisher. Then in our July 2018 edition, in a very fitting manner, our then-publisher Lisa Kresl wrote a column for our women’s edition. And the next month, Rick decided not to write another letter. Ever.
After 326 columns, perhaps you run out of things to say.
It’s been a while since that last letter from the publisher. Since then we’ve become a nonprofit and added Plano Magazine as a fifth magazine to go along with our four Dallas neighborhood publications.
Five years ago, Rick stepped down as Advocate president, was a part-time chief financial officer for a couple of years and then, a few years ago, he completely retired. If you’re wondering where Rick is, so are we. He might be at the Texas Rangers spring training camp in Arizona, or he could be touring Southeast Asia or cruising the Mediterranean or on a safari through Africa. I’m not exaggerating — he’s done all of those things during the past year or so.
Since July 2021, I’ve been president and editor-in-chief of Advocate Media. And I sincerely believe I’m at a time in my life when I should probably do a whole lot more listening than talking, hence the lack of letters from me. We did move offices after 29 years — same building, only four floors lower and still in one of the neighborhoods we cover — but we’ve tried to keep our focus the same as it always has been.
We’re still dedicated to neighborhood news. Those of us who work at the Advocate have always thought that news about street closures, alley trash, neighborhood schools and students, the interesting neighbor living down the street, the local organization that helps a niche need, and tidbits about our community’s quirks matter quite a bit. The little things are the sum of the whole, and no one else covers them in our neighborhoods like we do.
Because we’re actually your neighbors, that pothole bothers us, too. Caring about our neighborhood is the biggest reason we converted into a nonprofit publication. Sustainability and operational resilience are tricky in any business, but even moreso in a business like publishing that people have been saying is going out of business for the past 25 years.
So five years ago, we decided we’re going to keep covering neighborhood news in our print magazines and our online formats, but change our business structure to match our financial status. We became a nonprofit to give our readers (and neighbors) a better chance to help us, not only with story ideas, but also with donations from time to time.
We want to be here for another 35 years, and becoming a nonprofit is the best way we could think of to accomplish that goal.
Even after 35 years, when you pick up a copy of the Advocate or read our websites or email newsletters, we hope you continue learning something about our neighborhood and our neighbors. And hopefully yourself.
Because whether you’re one of our neighborhood advertisers, donors, vendors or readers, we’ll always be your neighbor.
