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Letter from the Publisher: Happy endings, new beginnings

“ ‘Good…bad…I’m the guy with the gun.’ ”

S. Richard Gard, Jr.

S. Richard Gard, Jr.

Regina Rickey, a rising star and bright spirit on the public notice staff, telephoned me with that message while I was visiting our Kansas City office in January of 2006. Regina had discovered those words published alongside the staff box inside that week’s Missouri Lawyers Weekly. She did a little more digging, and turned up similarly bizarre messages planted in each of the previous 13 issues, some borrowed from song lyrics, others taken at random, and all of them set in 3-point type.

 They began innocently enough, with “Printed in Canada,” followed the next week by “Happy Halloween.” Then, a darker tone took hold, with violent references to “the Lord Jesus Christ!,” “blood, guts, gore and veins in my teeth” and, finally, the aforementioned “guy with the gun.”

We sourced the rogue type to a rogue type on the production staff who wore his disgruntlement on his sleeve and a knife on his belt. It was what an employment lawyer friend of mine would call a case of self-termination. Even so, I enlisted an ex-cop to join me at the office the next morning to facilitate and, ultimately, usher.

I had been on the job less than four months. My family had been in Missouri less than four weeks. It was January, and it was cold. As I left our temporary apartment that morning, my wife called to me in her drawl: “We love you, but if you get killed today, the children and I are moving back to Atlanta.”

The story has a happy ending. We all lived happily afterward in St. Louis. We have loved Missouri, its warm embrace, and the lifelong friendships we’ve made. That’s why it’s sad to say goodbye in this my final column. Even so, it’s still a happy ending because we leave for the right reasons and because we leave you in excellent hands.

We’re moving to Chicago, where I’m joining a legal publishing company I’ve long known and admired. I’m getting a fancy title and the chance to try my hand at running the venerable Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Chicago Lawyer magazine, a group of real estate publications, events, and more.

I’m delighted to announce that my good friend and colleague Liz Irwin, a Missouri native and Mizzou journalism graduate, will take over as Missouri Lawyers Media publisher. She’s transferring here from The Dolan Co.’s Carolinas operations, where she has been publisher of North Carolina Lawyers Weekly among extensive other responsibilities. Liz is ideally suited to be Missouri Lawyers Media’s next publisher, and you’ll enjoy getting to know her.

This has been a dream assignment. When our founder and former CEO Jim Dolan recruited me almost 10 years ago to integrate three separately acquired newspaper operations into what would become Missouri Lawyers Media, he charged me to build the business by improving quality, investing in talent and doing right by the community. It has been a winning formula.

The other day I listened to Terry Gross’s Fresh Air interview with New Yorker Editor David Remnick on the occasion of the magazine’s 90th anniversary. They talked about Tina Brown’s seeming heresy of adding photography in the 1990s, Remnick’s own groundbreaking moves after succeeding her, and the delicate business of messing with tradition. Said Remnick, “People have a conservative instinct sometimes, but it doesn’t last long if the new thing is good, if the new thing works.”

That too is a winning formula, but he neglected to mention a key ingredient, one that we and The New Yorker happen to have in common: a discerning audience that appreciates what you’re trying to do and supports you, even when your most inventive concepts beget unexpected results. A single word reminds me of this every morning and every evening during my commute: “Winningest.”

Over the past nine-plus years we’ve introduced sweeping change to almost every aspect of the business. You’ve stayed with us every step of the way, and we can’t thank you enough.

We started out breaking some rules, like a prior owner’s restrictions on the size of photos for the cover of Missouri Lawyers Weekly. It’s called big art, and we posthaste dispatched that taboo by bringing onboard photojournalist Karen Elshout from the local metro. A dynasty of talented art directors created the splash to accommodate big art, among them: Sarah Burlison, Jason Lewton, Jessica Huang, Lora Wegman, and Ryan O’Shea.

We un-listened to the unspoken rule against naming the losing attorneys in verdict and settlement reports. To us, that seemed a half-as approach: It made the information half as useful to readers who might want to consult with both sides, not just one.

We used business terms, and dollar figures, to talk about the business of law. Our MOney 10 law firm financial rankings quickly grew to a MOney 15 and then a MOney 20, thanks to the assiduous reporting of Senior Reporter Heather Cole. Heather also pioneered our annual Billing Rates roundup, in any year our most cited undertaking. Managing Editor Scott Lauck took appellate reporting to new heights with his Supremetrics statistical analysis of Missouri Supreme Court voting patterns.

Our journalism hasn’t been all numbers. Throughout, we have endeavored to chronicle the human drama of the law and the profession. When Allison Retka Spence set out to do that by chronicling the day-to-day of a new lawyer’s setting up shop as a solo, life took control of the narrative. She found herself covering his battle with leukemia and, sadly, writing his obituary.

Former Editor Rick Jackoway and Managing Editor Jill Miller began our long and ongoing winning streak of state and national honors. As we’ve gained recognition, we’ve gained influence beyond the legal community and beyond our weight class.

Success breeds success. In the newspaper business that means that editorial quality attracts an audience and an audience, thanks to Jadii Castillo and her sales team, attracts advertising.

And if you do things right, events draw a crowd. From modest beginnings we built a year-round series of occasions for lawyers to congregate to celebrate excellence. We saw the culmination of those efforts one afternoon in January, when our Missouri Lawyers Awards managed to gather in one room all the major legal players in the still-smoldering Ferguson controversy, from the mayor of St. Louis, to the county prosecutor, to the victim’s family attorney, to the public-interest legal clinicians, to the legal director of the state American Civil Liberties Union.

Our public notice and production staffs, long the pride of The Dolan Co., have become the national operations hub for all our sister publishing units around the country, a tribute to the dedication of our two largest departments and the managers who lead them: Karie Clark, Lora Wegman again, the dauntless John Reno, and in her own unobtrusive way, Business Manager Amanda Passmore.

We can count many proud accomplishments, but you should know when I use the editorial “we” it’s really code for “they,” and the “they” are the friends and colleagues with whom I’ve had the privilege to work and play — to endeavor to build a business and do right by the community.

Regina Rickey, whom I mentioned at the top and who passed away at too young an age, was onto something when she looked to the staff box to find hidden gems. If you want to know the secret to our success over the past nine-and-a-half years, it’s right there in plain sight. It’s not the fine print; it’s the fine people whose names we list week in and week out.

Thank you everyone — readers, coworkers, and friends. You’ve meant the world to me.

S. Richard Gard Jr.

Irwin becomes publisher of Missouri Lawyers Media

By Scott Lauck

It’s only 43 miles from Liz Irwin’s hometown of Victoria to downtown St. Louis, but it took a detour through North Carolina to get her here.

Liz Irwin

Liz Irwin

As of today, Irwin is the publisher of Missouri Lawyers Media. She succeeds S. Richard Gard Jr., who served as publisher of the paper since October 2005 and now is moving to Chicago.

Since 2011, Irwin had served as the publisher of several other publications within The Dolan Co., Missouri Lawyers Media’s parent company. Irwin oversaw Dolan’s Carolinas group, comprising North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, South Carolina Lawyers Weekly and the Mecklenburg Times.

However, much of Irwin’s prior experience is in Missouri. She is a native of Jefferson County, where her mother still lives. She earned a degree in journalism in 1981 from the University of Missouri, and she spent approximately 15 years on the editorial side of the news industry before moving to advertising.

Her prior positions include vice president of advertising for The Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer and classified advertising director for The Kansas City Star and the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader.

Before joining Dolan about three years ago, she had not previously worked for publications with a focus on the legal industry. The biggest challenge, she said, was coming to understand the needs and interests of the legal community.

“It’s really understanding who your readers are, and in our case it’s lawyers,” she said.

Given her background, Irwin is taking over an operation that is both new and familiar to her. She said she intends to spend her first weeks understanding the company and its customers and clients.

“I hope to be able to spend some quality time listening,” Irwin said.

Missouri Lawyers Media includes Missouri Lawyers Weekly, the Daily Record papers in St. Louis, Kansas City and St. Charles, and The Countian papers in St. Louis and Jefferson counties.

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