March 1998

Catching up: On Growth and its Changes As the Association's activity and reach expand, so too do its internal operations. Here's an update on developments, including finances, growth and some structural tweaking. The Association ended 1997 with total net assets of $365,000, a $95,000 increase from the year earlier. Once again, the fiscal engine was the Classified Ad Network (CAN), which topped $500,000 in gross revenues for the first time since its beginning in 1993. Because of the financial performance, the Board of Directors, for the fourth year in a row, was able to avoid any increase in dues or prices for other services such as workshops, conventions and contests. For this year, we project gross revenues at our for-profit subsidiary Press Service to top $2.8 million -- $2.2 million from our ad placement service, MAPS, $570,000 from CAN, and $65,000 from the 2x2 network. The great bulk of that, of course, will go to our newspaper members in ad placements, $1.8 million in MAPS alone. From all operations, after taxes, we projected a net income for the year of $30,000. To keep that momentum going and to deal with the pressure such growth has placed on the staff, the Board has approved the hiring of a media planner to backstop advertising manager Chuck Boteler and a part-time bookkeeper to help us stay on top of the flood of transactions. Those additions should be of great benefit to all of our member newspapers, just as the addition last month of Suzanne Riggs as communications specialist will be. Sue is a mother of two from Owings, MD, who, until her children came along, worked for several years at the Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly as a legal secretary and then as recruitment coordinator. In recent years she has been doing communications projects for several voluntary organizations. Publication frequency qualifications for active membership in the Association have been changed by the Board, reflecting its belief that member papers should be involved in timely coverage and dissemination of news. Consequently, the minimum frequency was increased from monthly to 24 times a year. In addition, a newspaper must have published for a year before being considered for active membership. Previously, there was no such time requirement. A newspaper can be considered for affiliate membership in its first year of publication. In another Bylaws change, the name of MDDC's Legislative Committee has been changed to the Government Affairs Committee to reflect the broader range of its duties and involvement. The Board also has created a new Contests Committee to review the rules and practices of our growing Editorial Contest and to recommend whatever changes its determines are needed. If you have suggestions on how the contest can be improved, this is a good opportunity to be heard. Contact me at the MDDC office, or pass along your ideas to one of the committee members: Deborah Cornely of The Dundalk Eagle, Tom Graham of Patuxent Publishing, Jean Halle of The Baltimore Sun or Mike Powell of the Frederick News-Post. Back to March 1998 index

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