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HCR's 10th Anniversary |
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How it all began... By VICKIE GRIFFITH HAWVER With this edition, Hawver’s Capitol Report is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its founding–a founding due in part to the clothing preference of a former governor. What?!? Yes, the late Gov. Joan Finney’s apparel choice was a small factor among many that led to the creation of this newsletter, which has evolved over the past decade into a news service of printed and e-mailed components. If you’ll indulge us, we’d like to do a once-in-a-decade look back at HCR. The first HCR was published in late June of 1993. We publish on average 40 issues per year (about 45 in an election year, 35 in a non-election year) and because we’ve just completed 10 years, this edition is appropriately #401. What do you want to be when you grow up? Most kids don’t say they want to publish a newsletter on politics and government when they grow up, and neither did we. But since we were kids, Martin Hawver and I knew (separately) we wanted to be reporters or writers or something like that. Martin started his affiliation with the news business as a youngster, throwing the afternoon newspaper in Topeka. In high school he began working as a copyboy for the Topeka morning newspaper (which later merged with the afternoon paper) and became a copy editor there while in college and then began reporting. I began working as an intern at the Topeka daily while in college; in fact, by then Martin was a weekend city editor and I worked for him. We married a few years later and for many years were content with our newsroom jobs; Martin had begun covering the Statehouse in 1977 prior to our marriage, and I covered cops and general assignment stories and did the weekend city editor stint, before being assigned to cover the health industry, Topeka’s largest employer after government. I eventually became health editor and created, designed, wrote and edited a three-page Saturday health section. We liked working for the Stauffer publishing family, but around 1990 we knew that the proverbial winds of change were blowing into the media business. The Stauffers were preparing to sell their company and we speculated what working for a big media company down the road might be like. I have pretty fair intuition and felt that eventually it would be in our best interests if one or both of us no longer worked at the paper. Trouble was, I didn’t know if I had the courage to start my own business. About this time I became the volunteer editor of a struggling, 32-page-a-month magazine of the Junior League of Topeka. Long story short, it was a challenging job that I successfully completed, cheered on by my fellow, very supportive JLT members. I decided if I could do that, I could run my own business. It was good timing, because by then I sharply disagreed with the management style of a new top editor who had been brought in as part of the transition to the sale of the newspaper (and who lasted a few years). I turned in my resignation on Friday the 13th of September, 1991 (I was complimented on how nicely it was typed), and two weeks later started VGH Communications, named after me, and did newsletters, press releases and publication consulting for clients; within a year, I had made back my newspaper salary and then some. Starting HCR: Up all night Martin, working out of the newspaper’s press office in the Statehouse, had been protected to a certain extent by virtue of distance from the newsroom management. But by early 1993, he was increasingly unhappy in his job, and saw the good time I was having being my own boss. He wondered aloud one Sunday afternoon if it might be possible, through my business, for him to produce a newsletter about Kansas government and politics, a publication like no other in the state. Sounded good, but we decided it was a little scary to think that we’d be totally on our own without "real" jobs. That’s where Gov. Finney’s penchant for above-the-knee skirts came in, as the straw that broke the camel’s back. Martin was told basically to snipe at Gov. Finney and the length of her skirts in news articles. He wouldn’t do it. The matter was dropped, but he knew it was only a matter of time until there’d be another request to color how a story should come out. He completed the 1993 legislative session and resigned in May. We changed the name of our now joint business to Hawver News Company. Martin became co-owner and I became managing partner. We scurried around to start producing Hawver’s Capitol Report. We knew we couldn’t wait too long, plus there was political and governmental news that needed to be covered! We cobbled together a mailing list, stayed up all night producing the first newsletter so it could get to the printer’s on time, and mailed out our first edition in the latter part of June 1993 to hundreds of folks, our fingers crossed that some would subscribe. They did! The subscriber base grew; we have always been very grateful for our subscribers and their kind word of mouth. We knew the newsletter wouldn’t be for everyone because it is specialized. But we believed it would provide a niche for people who need nonpartisan news about Kansas government and politics–especially at a time when many media outlets are decreasing their coverage of that subject. Martin did the reporting and writing from a Statehouse pressroom, and I did the editing and layout and handled the marketing and business aspects from our world headquarters. I also continued the private media consulting side of our business. At one point, we even published an every-other-month slick magazine about health, women’s/family issues and so forth in Topeka, but couldn’t amass enough advertising to keep it going after two years. Growing HCR: Flash! Meanwhile, Hawver’s Capitol Report had kept growing, thanks to Martin’s passionate coverage of Kansas politics and government; he practically lives at the Statehouse, is in frequent phone contact with sources across the state and travels to many political conventions/meetings in- and out-of state–all resulting in an excellent news product for our subscribers. It became obvious that HCR had so much potential that it would be smart if we both worked pretty much full-time on it, so I phased out the consulting side of the business–it made sense to devote a greater portion of my time to enhancing the newsletter and selling more subscriptions than to creating bids over and over for generally short-term client projects. One of my first ideas as a "full-timer" on HCR, in the summer of 1998, was that during the 1999 session we should pilot an e-mail news bulletin service–at no additional charge to our subscribers. We were always frustrated, having moved from a daily newspaper to essentially a weekly publication during the session, that we couldn’t get breaking news out to our subscribers. I thought a breaking news e-mail service–a perk at no additional cost–could be a retention tool for current subscribers and an attraction for potential subscribers. We started the e-mail service slowly in 1999. It quickly became popular among subscribers; we get tons of e-mail thank-yous for this heads-up flash service. We published 63 e-mailed bulletins in 1999, 224 in 2000, 227 in 2001, 372 in 2002 and nearly 200 so far this year. Through both the e-mail news service and the printed newsletter, we’ve broken many stories, delivered in-depth coverage on critical issues and provoked a chuckle or two–we try to provide solid news and information with a little humor tossed in as "sauce on the goose," in the words of a subscriber who is a former state senator. Thank-you HCR is now the centerpiece of our business (we also syndicate a column Martin writes to Kansas newspapers, Martin makes speeches-for-pay at conventions, I’ve taught journalism as an adjunct instructor at Washburn University, and I’m slowly working on a "helpful booklets" project). For HCR, Martin puts to use his 27 years of political reporting experience to do almost all of the reporting and writing for the newsletter and bulletins, including nearly round-the-clock work during legislative wrap-up sessions. I help with a dab of the reporting and writing but concentrate on editing articles for the newsletter, editing and processing the e-mail bulletins, maintaining the e-mail database, laying out/desktop publishing the newsletter, marketing, customer service, subscription renewals and other business aspects. We enjoy the teamwork, are glad we have our own business (some veteran reporters, working for large media companies which have taken over their newspapers, haven’t fared well) and feel that we do have "real" jobs after all–jobs that we love. We’ve got plans in the works to enhance HCR’s service
to subscribers during the next 10 years, so please stay tuned.
We attribute HCR reaching the first 10-year milestone to two factors–providing
a useful news product and having loyal subscribers. Thank you! |
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