Cynthia Carter, "Jill-of-All-Trades" in the newsletter industry.

After graduating from Simmons College in Boston with a degree in journalism and management and some local newspaper experience and as a freelancer for the Boston Globe, Cindy Carter went to Washington looking for a newspaper job.

Because she had some experience writing about education, she responded to an ad for an education reporter for a newsletter, Education Funding News. "I really wasn't sure what a newsletter was," she admits, "but I interviewed with Jim Marshall and Fraser Lang at Government Information Services and got the job. It was 1978; they started me at $8,500 a year and sent me right to the Hill to cover ESEA, the elementary and secondary education act," Cindy says.

Knew nothing about Congress

"I knew nothing about Congress other than what you learn in high school, which isn't much. I didn't know a bill from a conference report or from Title I.

"I had the great good fortune of meeting Helen Hoart who was covering the Hill for Education Daily. We were competitors, although I was a weekly, but she took me under her wing and taught me everything I needed to know.

"Then, a year later, Helen was promoted and invited me to apply for her Hill job at Capitol Publications. I was there for the next 19 years as, successively, a reporter, editor, managing editor, executive editor, associate publisher and, finally, publisher and vice-president."

Left Cap Pub for a start-up

"I left Cap Pubs to be CEO of a start-up, the Healthcare Intelligence Network, a consortium of a sort put together by some of the most established publishers in the newsletter business. They were Fraser Lang, who had interviewed me all those years before; Richard Ossoff, current president of SIPA; Bob Jenkins; and Jim Flanagan.

"After two years, Tod Sedgwick called. He'd sold Pasha to the Financial Times and was looking for help in dealing with the management requirements of the Pearson organization. I had experience with that at Cap Pubs (also owned by Pearson at one point) and I couldn't say no to Tod."

Moves to FDA News

Then, in 2000, Cindy took her present position as president and CEO at FDAnews. (The company, founded by David Swit in 1972 and headed by him until his death in 1999, is still legally called Washington Business Information Inc., WBII, but is now known to subscribers as FDAnews. Swit's three children all serve on the board of directors, but none is involved in the business on a day-to-day basis.)

From the outside, WBII looks much as it did when I met Dave Swit in 1979--a successful multi-title publisher specializing in high-ticket Washington regulatory newsletters.

But Cindy Carter has made some changes.

"When I came here we had a couple of titles that were outside of our core competency in FDA and pharmaceuticals and those were sold."

Today, FDAnews publishes 11 subscription newsletters: monthlies, biweeklies and a daily priced from $525 to $1,895. Best known titles include:

* Drugs & Diagnostics Letter, 50x, $1,197/year

* The Food & Drug Letter, 24x $1,195

* The GMP Letter, 12x, $795--the title Sam Gilston (NL/NL 08/08/07) served as launch editor and for many years as a contract editor for WBII.

Numerous other publications

In addition, FDAnews publishes eight free e-zines, a buyers guide, a database, 50 books and management reports each year and puts on about 55 audio-conferences and 20 or so physical conferences annually.

Cindy says, "In 2000 our revenues were about 98 percent from newsletters and 2 percent from books and miscellaneous stuff.

"Today revenue from the newsletters," Carter explains, "is 42 percent and the remainder comes from books and reports, a couple of small databases, audio conferences, physical conferences, and some advertising-supported products." Both information on the website and the conferences include sponsors.

Cindy is on the board of the Specialized Information Publishers Association and took part in its discussions to change its name from the Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Association. She compares that with her work at FDAnews.

"It's similar to my service on the SIPA board. No one there wanted to 'abandon' newsletters. I hope to spend the rest of my career involved with newsletters, but it is simply the way the business has evolved. The web has changed everything. What was once the core of niche newsletters, 'information impossible to find,' almost doesn't exist today."

Marketing

"Our marketing is a mix of traditional and newer," Cindy says. "We do some postal direct mail for the newsletters and the physical conferences. We use e-mail for the books and audio conferences and also a certain amount of pay-per-click on the web.

"We regularly insert fliers for products and services with the newsletters, we do some trade shows and publish a catalogue.

Growth opportunities

"I see opportunities for growth especially in physical conferences. We do successful audio conferences, but there is something in a face-to-face situation you can't duplicate.

"You can learn something in a hallway conversation at the Mayflower Hotel you won't hear elsewhere. As a physical conference promoter, one big worry you do have is another terrorist attack."

Very recently, August 22-24, FDAnews offered the "3rd Annual FDA Regulatory & Compliance Symposium" in Cambridge, Mass. Registration fee was no less than $2,645; sessions were at Harvard facilities; headquarters hotel was the very nice Charles in Cambridge (the website noted the hotel was sold out). A total of 11 additional physical conferences are scheduled this fall.

Staff

The FDAnews staff today is 30 full-time employees "and some outside contractors who do things for us like management reports."

Once headquartered at the National Press Club, FDAnews is now located in an office building in Falls Church, Virginia, just outside of Washington. "At one point we owned the building," Cindy explains, "but it wasn't a good fit for our skill set.

"It seemed Karen Harrington, our administration director (and most senior employee) was spending more of her time worrying about tenants, real estate agents and keeping the AC system working than doing her 'real job.'"

FDAnews, 300 North Washington Street, #200, Falls Church, VA 22046, 703-538-7666, fax [phone], www.fdanews.com