Little newspaper getting big ideas?

Jm Mullin, the editor and publisher of Biscayne Times, is looking for a few good writers.

We here at Biscayne Times World Headquarters are looking for some new correspondents to supplement our stellar cast. If you live in a condo in downtown Miami (between the river and I-395), and you’d like to chronicle life in that particular frontier, we want to hear from you. Ditto for these areas: Edgewater, North Bay Village, Bay Harbor Islands, and North Miami. Warning: This is not a path to riches.

Please send contact information and writing samples (if you have them) to editor Jim Mullin.

When Mullin bought BT a few years ago its coverage was limited to the Biscayne corridor and surrounding neighborhoods.

But a story in the September issue covered a Coconut Grove story: the "behind-the-scenes feud involving the Strut’s only surviving original founder, Glenn Terry, and longtime participant and fundraiser, Antoinette Baldwin."

I'm attempting to contact Mullin to see if he has plans to expand BT's coverage area.

Biscayne Times editor Jim Mullin responds:

Bill:

Your analysis is wrong. Our coverage area, generally speaking, is the Biscayne Corridor, from downtown northward. Of course, we do cover Miami city government issues that affect the corridor, and we have in fact reported stories from Miami City Hall, and as you know city hall is in Coconut Grove. Does that mean we're now "covering" Coconut Grove? (A close reader of the BT would realize that our "Culture Briefs" calendar regularly recommends events outside the corridor.)

The King Mango Strut takes place in the Grove, but people from all around attend. It is a 28-year tradition, after all. Besides, it was a good story and I had it first, and wasn't going to let some arbitrary geographic boundary prevent us from pursuing it.

I've attached here some material about the BT that you may find useful if you want to write about us. One piece is a redacted letter I sent to an advertising agency outside Philadelphia whose client was interested in the BT. The agency rep knew nothing about us, so I wrote an explanatory letter.

Nothing, however, beats picking up a copy of our news magazine, holding it in your hands, and reading it. That the way more than 50,000 people experience it. I can direct you to several businesses where we drop copies.

~ mullin

And here's part of the letter Mullin sent to the advertsing agency that explains how BT is doing:

At a time when large metropolitan dailies and many weekly papers are struggling, intelligently edited niche publications like ours are thriving. In fact we’re actually growing. Since January 2009, we’ve added an average of 10.6 new advertisers each issue.

Throughout this year, we will continue expanding our distribution area northward toward Broward. In May we added all single-family homes in upscale Bay Harbor Islands. Last month [July] we added every home in the exclusive waterfront community of Eastern Shores. As Miami’s new condominiums are completed and begin to fill up, we steadily increase the number of copies we deliver to their mail rooms or lobbies.

For this success we have our readers to thank. After six years, they have become fiercely loyal to the BT, which they repeatedly tell us they keep handy all month, especially to make use of our Dining Guide, by far the most comprehensive listing of Biscayne Corridor restaurants in any local publication. Unlike every other publication in Greater Miami, we never cut our listings to save space. This benefits all advertisers, not just restaurants, because readers linger over advertisements for a full month.

So while Mullin says my analysis is wrong regarding BT expanding its coverage area, he doesn't fault the title of my post.

And says Mullin: "Throughout this year, we will continue expanding our distribution area northward toward Broward. [And] In May we added all single-family homes in upscale Bay Harbor Islands.

Just thinking out loud here: if you're going to expand the distribution of your paper to include new neighborhoods; won't you also have to cover those neighborhoods?

Score one point for Random Pixels.
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Postscript: BT is still doing stories not found elsewhere.

This month's story on the occupancy rate of some of those brand new condo towers on Miami's skyline is a prime example.