Tom Hagy cannot say enough good things about his new publisher. (Publisher Profile).

Tom Hagy's newsletter career has followed a slightly different track. Not the founding publisher, but an employee who has remained for nearly 18 years through two owners--the founding kitchen-table entrepreneur and the large acquiring company.

Asked how he got into newsletters, Hagy said, "My options as a drummer seemed limited, and I wanted to work at a job that didn't require I wear a hairnet or a parka. Besides percussion, I had three interests that led me to newsletters: writing, reporting and the law.

"When I interviewed for a staff-level position at a legal news company I gave it my best shot and didn't care about the compensation. (I would have worked for Twinkies, and I believe I said so, which is why I never handle negotiations.) I just knew what I wanted to do all day. Fortunately I passed the writing and reporting test and was able to work alongside a couple of veterans ("old guys" in their forties; of course, I'm now older than they were!").

Hagy said when he joined Mealey Publications, "I was the first employee. The publisher, Mike Mealey, had started his business competing head-to-head with his previous publisher and he had good early success.

"When he launched his third publication and saw it was growing nicely he decided to add his first reporter to take over the new report. That was me. That publication, Mealey's Litigation Report: Insurance, proved to be Mealey's most profitable publication ever. It was an excellent product launched at just the right time."

This was in 1984. "In the early days of the company, Hagy continued, "the impetus for growth was strong news reporting on urgent areas of litigation. These were niches not covered by larger publishers. In some cases, the larger companies didn't see any profits in narrow topics because of huge overheads. We could turn a profit on hundreds of customers.

Rapid growth in the 1990s

"Quick product development on urgent topics written by strong journalists kept us growing through the 1990s," Hagy said, "as did our move into legal conferences, programs that leveraged our market knowledge and reputation gained from the content side of the business. Conferences have been great not only from a revenue standpoint, but they also give us an outstanding and informal way to network with our market. Conferences help us develop news and product ideas."

Enter LexisNexis

"Being acquired by LexisNexis in August 2000 was a great thing for this business unit. Being acquired by a company that knows your market and has great resources like database engineers, sales professionals, market research specialists, and simply folks who know business and finance, has been excellent," Hagy said.

Unlike a number of giant corporations that acquire newsletter companies and then send them to the chop shop--often because of perfectly understandable financial considerations--that wasn't Hagy's experience with Lexis. "The acquisition has been nothing but good news for Mealey's," Hagy said.

"The folks at Lexis who made the case to buy Mealey's believed they were acquiring some competencies they didn't have before. They wanted to nurture our business rather than dismantle it," Hagy said.

Regarding the acquisition, which left Mealey's intact in Pennsylvania, Hagy continued, "It also has created some opportunity for people here to grow professionally. I was amazed to learn that there are people at Lexis who do nothing but pricing. They've been a great resource especially for a generalist like myself. We like to think we are teaching our Lexis colleagues a lot about legal news and legal conferences."

Management skills

Asked how he orchestrated his evolution from a reporter to an editorial director to his current position as vice president and general manager, Hagy said, "As for management skills, it has been a lifetime study. My dad was a self-made manager and very effective. I've had great managers, bad managers, great managers who made mistakes, managers who let me make mistakes. I think being the middle child helped. Except for getting beat up by my sister, it was a good way to learn that being part of a team is sometimes a good way to help lead a team. You just have to know when to bow out. And when to duck.

"Self study also helps. Get formal training when you can. Read the Harvard Business Review and anything you can get your hands on. I would get an MBA but it's quicker just to hire MBAs," Hagy joked, which he is often prone to do.

2001 and 2002 both good years

"Last year we had success in using technology and the LexisNexis sales force to sell product. We continued to launch into new areas, but created a robust e-mail delivery platform which struck a chord with attorneys," Hagy said.

"2001 was an excellent year for direct mail for Mealey's. We stuck to our news-based marketing approach and very targeted mailing lists, and the market responded. We added a single telemarketer for conferences, which is working well," Hagy said.

"Most importantly, we engaged the LexisNexis sales force which did a great job selling online products as well as print. so direct sales is now working well. We have started generating leads for sales with our direct mail, so the two channels complement each other."

Has the internet changed everything?

Hagy said, "Everything is the same but different. Just as in 1984, people still pay for our niched material. Now they get it faster, with far better features--from search capability to e-mail delivery to access to huge archives of material--so they are willing to pay more than ever, too.

"LexisNexis has been around since before the internet, so being able to partner my team with theirs has been great for the product and great for the customers. We have admired and learned from what a lot of internet content pioneers have tried, and the internet has made more people used to getting information online, so the internet has just made things better. Our website has been a great 24/7 customer service and marketing mechanism for us. And the website Lexis.com is a tremendous around-the-clock way to access our content, both current and archived materials."

P.O. Box 62090, King of Prussia, PA 19406, 610-768-7800, fax [phone], www.mealeys.com

RELATED ARTICLE: Mealey's puts "plenty of news" in its DM efforts

I asked Tom Hagy to elaborate on his comment about 2001 being "excellent year for direct mail for Mealey's," since we don't hear that often these days.

"I realize," he said, "that almost everyone had a bad year for direct mail. In our case I think the difference was the type of market we are in. Attorneys either want coverage of our topics or not. They either have an asbestos case, a Baycol case, an insurance practice, or they don't.

"Our direct mail takes the approach of giving them enough news that they actually learn from our direct mail. The philosophy is this: If I can learn from the direct mail about an area of the law that lam up to my eye-balls in, then the report will likely help me.

"We put plenty of news in our direct mail. In fact, we should probably charge people to receive it. I am sure publishers of less mission-critical type of subject matter can learn from that. I suppose a publisher of a fitness newsletter who tells me how to do a better push-up in a sales piece might get me signed up for a trial."