Twenty years and counting…

The Business News Staff

Staff

May 5, 2023

NORTHEAST WISCONSIN – Much has happened in the Northeast Wisconsin business community in the last 20 years.

New businesses have opened, while others have closed.

Companies have undergone expansions, while others have implemented layoffs.

Organizations have celebrated the longevity of their tenured leaders, while others welcomed a new generation of management.
Through it all, one of the things that has remained constant is The Business News.

Founded by Jerry Mader in May 2003, the business-focused newspaper has spent the last two decades sharing the stories of the region’s business community.

Coming from a newspaper background himself, Mader – a native of Ohio – said after moving to the Northeast Wisconsin area, he was astonished it didn’t have a business-focused newspaper.

“I discovered there was no business paper here,” he said. “Given my publishing experience, this surprised me. I then researched more about the Northeast Wisconsin region, looked at other business papers serving similar markets and it seemed like a great opportunity.”

Although its original intent was aimed at filling a niche in the market, Mader said the impact The Business News has had on the Northeast Wisconsin region in the last 20 years goes far beyond that.

//17bec5072710cda5b8dd81b69f4c6e58.cdn.bubble.io/f1683293193678x160482932020392860/richtext_content.webpJerry Mader

“I believe the stories The Business News has shared over the years have made a positive impact (not only on the businesses but on the people as well),” he said. “I believe a good business newspaper should provide information and ideas to help businesses in the community succeed. As these businesses provide employment for individuals and support for the community as a whole, our quality of life is improved.”

Over the years, Mader said the publication has not only covered, but has been a part of, several important moments throughout the Northeast Wisconsin region, including:
The first season of the Fox Cities Performing Arts CenterThe Lambeau Field renovation completionMarinette Marine awardance of the Littoral Combat Ships building contracts for the NavyThe Great Recession of 2008Oshkosh Truck’s ongoing contracts with the U.S. militaryChanges in the regional banking industry (M&I-BMO Harris, Nicolet-BayLake-FNB, Bank Mutual-Johnson)Schreiber Foods’ move to downtown Green BayThe launch and opening of TitletownTechThe COVID-19 pandemic
Leadership transition
Having worked in the newspaper industry most of his career, Mader said he wanted to set some deadlines for himself when it came to The Business News – which included an exit strategy around the publication’s 20th year.

“Most startup businesses don’t make it to their one-year anniversary – I did that in 2004,” he said. “If a business can make it to its five-year anniversary, then the odds are in their favor – I did that in 2008.”

By the time the business approached its 20th anniversary, Mader said he hoped to have a mature newspaper that had a history of proven and sustainable value for its readers and advertisers.

“On the personal side, I hoped for a good 20-year run owning my own business, to be a good provider for my family and to conclude my career ‘young’ enough to enjoy a healthy and active retirement,” he said.

As The Business News embarks on its 21st year, under the new leadership and guidance of CEO and Publisher Megan Dickman-Renard, it’s safe to say Mader has accomplished the goals he had set out to achieve 20 years ago.

“While I’m truly not concerned with my ‘legacy,’ or that anyone really remembers that I had anything to do with The Business News – I am proud of the newspaper,” he said. “I believe it fills an important role in this region, and I’m especially happy The Business News will go on, under Megan’s leadership, into the future.”

An entrepreneur herself, Dickman-Renard said she purchased the publication for a variety of reasons – both personal and professional.

“From a personal perspective, I grew up around businesses, and I had two parents who were both very entrepreneurial,” she said. “Our dinner table conversations – in addition to sharing about our days – often focused on big topics related to business, including new businesses in the area and people taking innovative approaches to their businesses.”

Dickman-Renard said when she would talk about these topics out in the community, she often found they weren’t widely known.
“So, the seeds were planted that would later grow into me acquiring The Business News,” she said.

Those seeds were further sown, Dickman-Renard said, while working at Demiplane – a Green Bay-based company that creates digital toolsets for the tabletop role-playing game market.

“During my time there, they secured a partnership contract with Marvel Entertainment,” she said. “This was a huge deal to us, but it was also huge that a company founded and headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin was getting to work with Marvel. Ultimately, the story broke nationally before it broke locally, and I thought about how many other businesses were doing absolutely fascinating and innovative things and not getting the visibility that those things warranted.”

In Dickman-Renard’s mind, that was a problem, although it was one she said she felt well-positioned to solve.

As a longtime subscriber herself, Dickman-Renard said she knew the newspaper was positioned in the market to be able to solve that problem, and “with some investment, some new perspective and some repositioning in the market, it could be a strong pipeline of information about businesses in our area.”

“What was compelling was that the paper already had a proven history – almost 20 years – of representing and supporting local businesses and doing so with integrity and thoughtfulness,” she said.

Purchasing The Business News in 2021, Dickman-Renard officially transitioned into the role of CEO and publisher full-time in early 2022 – taking over the newspaper’s nearly two-decade legacy.

“One of the first things I did was spend a lot of time listening to people in the market – from freelancers and business and community leaders to advertisers to subscribers – I wanted to get a deep understanding about what people thought about the publication, why they currently read it and what would make it even more valuable to our subscribers,” she said.

In that initial phase, Dickman-Renard said Mader was still present in the business, assisting with the transition as she learned the ins and outs of The Business News.

“I got a chance to pick his brain about the deep history the paper had in the area – 20 years was a lot of ground to cover, so it helped having Jerry on board through that initial phase,” she said.

The next chapter
When Mader officially transitioned out of the business midway through 2022, Dickman-Renard said she started to implement more significant changes to the paper’s vision and began putting some new initiatives in place.

“Coming from a bit of a non-traditional background, I have to say some of the unique breadth of knowledge put me in a good position to start looking to the paper’s future,” she said. “I had previously owned a business in Northeast Wisconsin, so in some ways, I was now in a position of trying to build value for people who I related to on a practical level.”

Dickman-Renard said she is also someone who constantly looks to learn and understand new things.

“One of my favorite quotes is, ‘if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room,’” she said. “As a result, I’ve found myself learning from interesting people in some fascinating rooms.”

//17bec5072710cda5b8dd81b69f4c6e58.cdn.bubble.io/f1683293227997x921162879425051000/richtext_content.webpMegan Dickman-Renard

Ultimately, Dickman-Renard said there is much a community itself will tell you and teach you when you approach creating a new market position from a place of curiosity.

“Some of those pieces are directly responsible for changes we’ve already made to the publication,” she said.

Some of those changes, Dickman-Renard said, have hopefully been “pretty noticeable.”

“One of the first things I did was to begin work on a digital presence – both in terms of a website and in terms of being present on social media,” she said. “Prior to that, the publication had been primarily in print and the website only hosted web-ready PDF versions of the print paper, which was not particularly conducive to searching for content, saving content or sharing content.”

Dickman-Renard said the next “substantial” piece of the revitalization puzzle was the investment in the publication’s content.

“We brought on some new people – the first of which was Heather Graves, our editor – and we took a strategic look at the content, where it was and where we wanted it to go,” she said. “We also pulled our layout and design in-house, which helped make us more agile and allowed us to make each paper feel fresh and dynamic.”

The focus on a digital presence and overall content, Dickman-Renard said, were “fundamental to setting the tone for where we were headed as a publication.”

“We wanted to prove we were listening to the market; demonstrate we could become even more deeply invested in the community and share information that was local and valuable; and we wanted to bring all of that to our subscribers’ fingertips in an accessible way,” she said.

Dickman-Renard said those at The Business News want to bring voice to and from the business community in Northeast Wisconsin.

“In order to do that, we have to demonstrate we are good stewards of that voice, and that we have something to add to the conversation,” she said.

Ready for what comes next
Dickman-Renard said The Business News brings something “absolutely crucial” to the Northeast Wisconsin community – local news coverage.

“There has been a pushback toward local media, with an understanding, I think, that each community is unique and it can’t adequately be represented by a national news source,” she said. “This isn’t to say national news isn’t important – it’s absolutely crucial for being informed about what’s happening nationally – but our local news should be just that – it should be local.”

Dickman-Renard said The Business News brings its readers news about the businesses in their community, the trends impacting those businesses and conversations local business and community leaders are participating in and puzzling over.

“Even in a time when businesses are participating in a global economy, what’s happening locally will always be relevant,” she said.

Naturally, as the publication and its staff looks toward the future, Dickman-Renard said she recognizes some changes will come.

“But there will also be some pieces that are stable and can be relied upon,” she said. “We will always strive to cover Northeast Wisconsin as completely as we can. There are no shortages of important stories to tell about our area. We will always look to provide value and to act as a catalyst for important conversations about business in our region.”

Dickman-Renards said the future of media – particularly local media – is still being shaped, and “I feel excited about the fact that The Business News is part of that conversation.”

As the newspaper celebrates its 20th anniversary, Dickman-Renard said the past year has been one of revitalization – one built on the foundation of the past 20 years and fueled by the excitement of the road ahead.

“Our future is dynamic – as we see such innovative organizations in our area grow and develop, as well as new startups bringing added value and new markets to our area – it is my goal to position The Business News in such a way as to keep telling those stories while also being known for innovating in our own industry,” she said. “No one can say what the future will look like, but I will say that The Business News will be there to tell those stories, too.”