WoMag: The Last Issue

According to the (admittedly) unreliable memories I carry around, today's issue of Worcester Magazine will mark the end of chapter two.

Chapter one began when Dan Kaplan started publishing Worcester Magazine with a cover price of one dollar. It was back in the days of Zonkaraz, the Garden of Delights, and the Channel 13 Carriage House on Oread Street. Sometime after Conrad Schultz came aboard and sold more advertising than humanly possible, the weekly publication's cover price was simply erased. It's been free ever since.

As far as I can recall, WoMag was the first to do this. From the late 1970's on, the "ad-rag" business has flourished, following WoMag's demonstration that it could, indeed, be done. But unlike imitators without any substantial content, our city's weekly flagship for the fourth estate was overflowing with creative content, news reporting, and the kind of intellectual steam that only a sales weasel might fail to notice or consider of any consequence.

Chapter two began when Allen Fletcher arrived on the scene and carried WoMag into the future it otherwise might never have had, ie- a younger market. He amassed a fine squad of content creators, and the weekly WoMag has been doing quite well as a result.

I can definitely relate to Allen's decision to move on and do something different with his life. He's my age. If I owned a successful business at this point, I'd jump at the opportunity to sell it.

The new owner, from what meager accounts I've been able to read about him, appears to be a strong willed and aggressive businessman. Worcester needs strong willed and aggressive businessmen. Hopefully, in what is now WoMag's chapter three, his time at the helm will develop enough income to pay for the acquisition of the kind of talent and creativity that gets people to actually bend down and pick up a copy of WoMag every week... week after week.

Because, even though Worcester needs strong willed and aggressive businessmen, and businesses need good sales people, it all comes to nothing if you've got nothing to sell.

And the day is fast approaching when advertisers are not going to continue to pay for mere exposure... they're not going to want to pay anything at all unless somebody actually clicks on the ad.