Editor in chief Lindsey Dunn pens her last column, sharing lessons from Becker's six years of remarkable growth
This is my last column for Becker's Hospital Review. While I'm looking forward to the next stage of my career, it's not without some sadness that I leave the Becker's team. When I joined just six years ago, we had a staff of five and had just launched Becker's Hospital Review. Today, we're 30-plus strong, and our website garners more than a million views each month.
Early on, I was charged with regularly connecting with our target audience of C-suite hospital and health system leaders. However, this proved a difficult feat. Busy CEOs running million- and billion-dollar organizations were hesitant to grant an interview to a publication they'd never heard of, and rightfully so.
My luck changed when Dr. David Feinberg, then CEO of UCLA's hospitals (he was promoted in 2011 to CEO of the system), agreed to an interview. We talked for nearly an hour, and I learned more about running a hospital in those 60 minutes than I ever imagined. The interview served as a foundation for my knowledge base on covering healthcare and also opened doors to numerous other interviews. You can read the interview here; I apologize for the lack of headline cleverness — I was just starting out.
I attached a link to Dr. Feinberg's interview to nearly every CEO interview request I made for the next sixth months; my requests were approved by health systems at a much greater rate after!
Becker's reputation has changed considerably from my first year here. We went from a relatively unknown trade book to one with web traffic rivaling its competitors. We host industry events with thousands of attendees and prominent healthcare executives. Four years ago, I really thought we'd achieved something when 40,000 visitors came to BeckersHospitalReview.com in a single month. Today that number exceeds 650,000.
How'd we do it?
Great people producing great content. Our reporters and editors are some of the most intelligent and driven people I've ever had the pleasure of working with. That drive propelled us to achievements, both readership- and revenue-wise, I didn't really think possible back in 2009.
Becker's is also extremely nimble, adjusting strategy and digital, print and event platforms to market forces and new opportunities. There's never red tape here, which is an element of organizational culture that's very rare to find.
And while I can't link it directly to our growth, one of the most valuable pieces of advice I received during my time as editor in chief of our once fledgling and now industry-leading publication came from Chuck Lauer, former publisher of Modern Healthcare.
If you don't know Chuck, you should seek him out at the next Becker's event. He was lured to Crain's by Rance Crain himself to take over the then money-losing Modern Healthcare. Chuck turned the book around, making it the leading weekly publication in the industry; he stayed for 25 years before retiring. A few years later, he got a call from Scott Becker, our publisher, asking to meet one day. Scott hired Chuck on as a consultant to Becker's, and I've had the pleasure of meeting with Chuck every month or so since. Chuck has provided extremely helpful guidance to me over the years, but one lesson especially stuck with me.
When Chuck and I were out to lunch one afternoon, he grilled me about my views on certain polarizing healthcare issues — "death panels" and other reactions to health reform legislation. Like a good journalist, I responded by presenting both side of the argument. Chuck is far too polite to ever say such a thing, but it was fairly clear: My responses were boring. "Have an opinion," he told me, adding that because of my knowledge of the industry, people are interested in my opinions. "They are?" I thought.
Maybe so.
So I started sharing them when asked. I accepted more invitations to speak on and moderate panels, sharing my thoughts openly and freely.
Eventually, our team decided we needed a dedicated forum to share our opinions, insights and inferences on the issues we cover. Hence, this blog you are reading now.
When we launched the Daily Beat, in August 2013, my goal was to give our editors a place where we could share more personal thoughts with readers — offering a bit of commentary on a site that traditionally only offered unbiased reporting. Our publisher, Scott Becker, and president, Jessica Cole, were kind enough to approve my pet project, although none of us expected it'd attract significant readership.
Today, the blog draws as many readers as our most popular channels, and some posts have rivaled that of our editorial-intensive national lists.
The popularity of the blog, I think, is a direct result of the incredible intelligence, insight and wit of the multiple editors who contribute to it. I know I leave it in capable hands.
And while I'll no longer be posting to it, I know I'll be reading.