IFPA PROFILE: The Dubuque Advertiser
September 2010
IFPA PROFILE: The Dubuque Advertiser
Story by Dwight Bitikofer
Randall Aird holds a red belt in karate. He is a champion walleye fisherman. And he is a second-generation publisher of The Dubuque Advertiser.
Dubuque, Iowa (pop. 56,583) spreads across seven hills on the west bank of the Mississippi River. Illinois and Wisconsin meet just across the river from Dubuque. The Dubuque Advertiser spreads its 36,193 papers across those seven hills each Wednesday and reaches East Dubuque and Galena in Illinois and Hazel Green and Dickeyville in Wisconsin.
Dubuque topped the United States Conference of Mayors list of "most livable cities" in 2008. It calls itself the "Masterpiece of the Mississippi." With its 500-foot hills and impressive river bluffs, the region is touted by locals as "the Iowa Alps." Tourists flock to the area in autumn for its show of hardwood colors. The riverfront includes a casino, a dog track and cruise boats. A new bicycle trail that will run along miles of river frontage is being planned.
Indeed, it is a city that draws its native sons and daughters home from far places to raise their families and educate them in acclaimed public schools.
According to Aird, it is a town that is still drawing new industry at time when much of the upper Midwest is losing jobs. John Deere is the largest employer with its line of yellow backhoes and other pieces of construction equipment built in Dubuque. Hormel Company has returned a packing plant to the industrial parks on the west side of town.
Even so, "2009 was the worst since I have been in the industry," asserted Aird. "Everybody tightened their straps. Business people don't have the confidence to invest with the administration we have now."
The paper has seen signs of more stability and returning business in 2010. The shopper averages about 20 tabloid pages, pages that have been tightened with smaller classified advertising type and other efficiencies of space to save on paper cost. The paper does some community press releases and a non-profit community calendar sponsored by a credit union.
A sister business, DA Printing, has actually grown during the recent years of lean advertising. The company invested in a new digital color printer for its commercial sheet-fed press business. The ability to print "National Geographic quality short-run color" has helped that business grow. They print for customers as far away as Florida. They are one of the largest wedding invitation printers in the Tri-State area. If the print shop and the shopper were one company, the print shop would account for over a quarter of the business.
The Dubuque Advertiser was started in 1963 by Randall Aird's parents. Aird delivered papers in the early days and eventually managed the circulation. He has been full-time in the business since 1970. When his father, William "Jack" Aird, suffered a stroke in 1988, Randall Aird took over the business.
"My parents had nothing when they started," said Aird. "My dad had true grit. People trusted him.
"I can't take responsibility for our success," Aird went on. "I surrounded myself with good people and did a lot of listening. Then I used my common sense to make decisions."
A youngster named Greg Birkett stopped by the office after school one day in 1977 and asked Randall Aird's parents for a job. They told him he could clean up the floors during inserting and rolling of the papers. He kept coming back. When he was in high school, someone commented on what a good phone voice he had. Birkett has been with the Dubuque Advertiser ever since. He is the face of the Advertiser most often seen at Independent Free Papers of America (IFPA) events. He is the company's general manager and manages the three outside sales reps.
In addition to Birkett, production manager Tim Steines is an indispensable part of the family operations.
Randall Aird and his wife, Lisa, own the paper. Randall is publisher. Lisa collects accounts receivable and is in charge of customer service. Son, Chris Aird, 32, is circulation manager. Son, Brian, age 25, works in circulation and the commercial printing department. The sons have spent time working in Chicago and Denver respectively, but have come back to the family business in Dubuque.
The company has 11 full-time employees (including owners and managers) and eight part-time employees along with over 200 independent contractors as carriers and motor route drivers.
Randall Aird said that one of the best ideas he ever implemented was reorganizing the delivery routes so that a carrier could deliver each route in under an hour, "the attention span of most young adults."
Members of the business are active in a number of service organizations including the Sertoma Club, the Knights of Columbus and the Dubuque County Fair Board. Randall Aird has been especially active with the Mississippi Walleye Club. One of the club's annual projects which he has often organized is pairing a hundred 9, 10 and 11-year-old youngsters with experienced fishermen for a Mississippi River fishing adventure. A facility for handicapped children, Albrecht Acres, auctions off Randall's services as a fishing guide each year. He also helps that group's charges with fishing on a camp pond.
Aird considered at one point leaving the shopper business to become a professional, full-time fishing guide. One year when he participated in the Masters Walleye circuit, his team finished eighth among 1,400 teams nationwide. He does guide some local fishing trips for walleye, catfish or freshwater drum. He claims intimate familiarity with the Mississippi from the Minnesota border down to Davenport, Iowa. He has a couple of boats, but mostly uses his red, 18-foot Tuffy Renegade on the river.
Aird and his sons recently returned from a six-day backpacking trip with friends in Wyoming's Snowy Range mountains. He is pleased that at age 58 he can still comfortably hike with a 50-plus pound pack at altitudes of over 10,000-feet. He said the younger members of the expedition dubbed him with the name, "Old Man Gone Too Far."
Randall Aird no longer actively practices karate, but he said he uses its principles every day.
"I clear my mind, I set goals, I pace myself," said Aird. "I follow the practice of the three P's: I prepare, I perform and then I put away."
Aird believes that attitude serves him well in business. He thinks the free paper industry will continue to evolve, but that there will always be people who want to get information from a paper held in their hands.
Aird credits organizations like Midwest Free Community Papers (MFCP), the Association of Free Community Papers (AFCP) and IFPA with helping give him the tools he needs to stay in step with the changes that occur in the industry.
He approaches change and challenge with those tools he learned in karate: "I sit back, I relax and I take breaths," said Randall Aird.
Writer Dwight Bitikofer is publisher of Webster-Kirkwood Times
In St. Louis and is an IFPA director
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