Don Baker and the DBJ’s innovative publication model

On Thursday morning, I interviewed Don Baker, Editor-in-Chief of the Dayton Business Journal (listen to the recap of our discussion here). We talked about Baker’s background, job responsibilities, who the Dayton Business Journal serves and how his publication utilizes the online medium and different social media sites.

Baker went to college at Ball State University, thinking that he wanted to be a television broadcaster one day; however, once he realized that broadcast dealt with more talking and less reporting, he decided that he wanted to become a reporter. He wanted to be discovering the news and writing about it, not just talking in front of a camera about it.

Baker worked for four different southwestern Ohio newspapers (including the DBJ), mainly as a business reporter, before moving up the editorial ladder at the Dayton Business Journal in the early 2000s. He has been the editor-in-chief since 2006.

Now, Baker plays many different roles for the DBJ. He manages the publication’s budget, helps develop projects and events, edits stories along with another editor, coordinates with the paper’s freelance photographers and works with design specialists on the cover story and graphics for the center spread.

The DBJ is essentially a local version of the The Wall Street Journal; it serves Dayton’s business community, and the readers are mostly small business owners, CEOs and other local business figures. Baker says that readers “look to us for information that can lead to business leads in the future.”

What he means is that the DBJ gives business owners information that could help them start relationships with other businesses. It also gives local business owners knowledge of what their competitors are doing, and it provides stories on successful businesses, which could help lead new owners in the right direction.

The DBJ currently has a weekly print edition (as well as a digital edition), a website and a mobile app. The digital edition reads like a newspaper, and is filled with interactive links and graphics. Subscribers also receive two daily emails- one at 8 a.m. and one at 3 p.m. Baker says that the DBJ is now a “digital-first publication.”

Most of the longer, more in-depth articles go in the print issue, while the breaking news and other quick news stories will be on the website. The DBJ’s website also serves as an extension of the print issue. And while most newspapers are shifting entirely to the Internet, the DBJ’s print circulation has actually risen 1.5% over the past year.

Baker believes that this trend is due to the fact that the DBJ serves a very specific customer. The DBJ is also a publication that is centered around specific news, serving a specific group of people, and it is an unrivaled publication in the Dayton area. Therefore, viewership is likely less of a concern for the DBJ than for other local newspapers.

The DBJ primarily uses four social networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus. Baker explained how they use Facebook to interact with followers and also to link to articles that might concern families. The DBJ uses Twitter to reach out to the younger-owner audience, and they use LinkedIn to get to the local business elite.

In this way, the DBJ is using different social media sites to provide information to different kinds of readers; I think that this is ‘groundswell thinking!’ Most of their news, however, is shared on all four social media sites.

Don Baker and the Dayton Business Journal are a unique publication with a unique audience. They are growing their publication and are reaching different kinds of readers through different strategies, using social media and the Internet.