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Saint Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.)

By Dave Beal, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Nov. 13--Jim Dolan sometimes does things differently. Dolan is CEO of the Minneapolis-based Dolan Media Co. empire, which has 800 employees in 21 states. Yet five weeks ago, he turned up as a reporter with a front-page byline in the first edition of a weekly community newspaper.

The paper, "The Journal," is also unusual. It was little more than a dream, headed for a 2007 startup, until Hurricane Katrina flattened the New Orleans area. After the disaster, Dolan Media hurried up its debut in order to help storm-stricken Jefferson Parish "get back to normal."

The Journal is one of four publications put out by Dolan in the New Orleans area.

Katrina floored them for a few days, as employees scattered far and wide. Journal publisher Mark Singletary and seven others among Dolan's 54 New Orleans employees lost their homes. But through all the trauma, Dolan Media failed to print just one edition -- that of its Daily Journal of Commerce. Its anchor publication there, the New Orleans CityBusiness weekly, didn't miss a beat.

The trouble in New Orleans, terrible as it is, may end up as little more than a blip in the growth trajectory at Dolan Media. The company touts a rapidly growing portfolio of 41 publications serving mostly legal and business audiences, plus online editions, appeals court services and investments.

Dolan does not disclose profits, and releases only very rounded numbers on revenue -- $100 million, roughly twice what they were two years ago and up from zero when he launched the company in 1993. He predicts revenue will more than double over the next five years as the company acquires more legal newspapers and grows from within.

"Life is good here in the niches," he says. "All of us are sort of becoming an inch wide and a mile deep."

Mike Winton of Winton Partners in Minneapolis, one of Dolan Media's original investors, has been on its board since 1994. Winton, who says he gets e-mails from Dolan at all hours, calls him the key to the company's success.

"He eats and sleeps this thing 24 hours a day," says Winton. "I hear from him all the time. He's totally absorbed with this newspaper chain."

The newspaper's legal publications are thick with legal ads, which don't require large sales crews. Winton notes that many of these ads are bankruptcies, foreclosures and other court actions associated with tough times, thus they cushion Dolan Media's revenue stream during cyclical downturns.

The company has enjoyed strong support from venture capital firms, most notably Cherry Tree in Minnetonka. Venture capitalists term their most successful investments "home runs," and Cherry Tree Chairman Tony Christianson says Dolan Media could some day reach that status. "I'd give it at least a double or a triple, with more to come," says Christianson.

John Ullmann, executive director of the World Press Institute in St. Paul, stumbled across a Dolan publication three years ago when he was waiting for the institute's van to be serviced.

The two men struck up a friendship, and Dolan joined the institute's board. Now, says Ullmann, Dolan has become one of its most active directors, particularly on technology-related issues. He says Dolan came up with the idea, now adopted, to publish a book for international journalists online rather than by turning to a traditional publisher.

Dolan Media's two largest shareholders are ABRY Mezzanine Partners in Boston and Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, the venture arm of Quebec's Social Security system. A group of about 25 Dolan executives is the third-largest.

Dolan, 56, originally from Colorado, is married to his junior high school sweetheart. His wife, Sylvia Dolan, runs the company's news service and its monthly employee newsletter. The Dolans have no children. At home, they often sit next to each other on the sofa, handling company business on their laptop computers.

In the Twin Cities, the company publishes three newspapers: Finance and Commerce, distributed throughout the Twin Cities area Tuesday-through-Saturday; the Saint Paul Legal Ledger, twice a week serving mainly Ramsey County; and the Minnesota Lawyer, a weekly that goes to attorneys and judges throughout the state.

In the mid-1990s, the three publications stepped up news content. Locally, 10 full-time journalists cover government, finance, law, politics, development and real estate. The newspapers also run national columnists and stories from the Associated Press and Dolan's news service.

Dolan began his media career as a police reporter in San Antonio. His paper, the San Antonio Express-News, was the first U.S. property acquired by global media baron Rupert Murdoch.

He spent 15 years at Murdoch's News Corp., rising to become director of its new media group before leaving in 1986. Then, after seven years at jobs in New York City and Chicago, he and Cherry Tree teamed up to start Dolan Media by buying Finance and Commerce.

Dolan Media did nearly 50 acquisitions from 1993 to 2003.

Then it sold its public records division to the LexisNexis unit of Reed Elsevier. Dolan says the loss of that business cut annual sales from around $100 million to $40 million, but that it has fully replaced the lost revenue now by growth of existing businesses and more acquisitions.

The sale price of the Reed Elsevier deal wasn't disclosed, but Dolan says gains from it gave Dolan shareholders a "large payday" and recapitalized the company to position it well for growth.

Meanwhile, back in New Orleans, the recovery is in full swing.

Initially, staffers fled to the homes of friends and relatives in locales as distant as North Dakota, Michigan and New York. Five days after Katrina slammed into the Big Easy, 20 of the 54 employees still hadn't been heard from. Now all have checked in. Most are back with the company, in New Orleans or elsewhere.

The company equipped many of them with laptops, cash and other assistance, so they could do their work from afar. It set up an emergency command post at Dolan facilities in Baltimore, where Singletary had fled with the backup tapes and file servers needed to keep things going.

And late last month in Minneapolis, Dolan Media hosted an online symposium on the future of New Orleans. Eighteen experts and an audience of 3,500 people took part.

The business community in and around New Orleans needs Dolan's publications to reach its customers again and to recover, says Mark Singletary. "We look at this as an opportunity."

Dave Beal can be reached at dbeal@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5429.

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