Peter Vandevanter
  (704)619-5345
   
Peter Vandevanter is an innovative, multi-media publisher.

At The Charlotte Observer, as Vice President of New Ventures since 1999, he has led the charge to converge newspaper, online and local magazines for advertisers and readers alike, to create a competitive advantage in the marketplace to grow revenue and take market share.

In 2004 he launched Cars.com The Magazine which bundled online, the magazine and in-paper liners. He oversees CareerBuilder online's tabloid weekly. In 2005 he was a key contributor to the team that bundled the three real estate platforms into Observer.homes.com .

He believes that the traditional newspaper is being dismantled by the internet, niche by niche. At the same time, the opportunity is there to build the business back even stronger by bundling the internet, the newspaper and targeted magazines together. If that convergence is accomplished, both the revenue and the reach of the newspaper increase substantially.

The ultimate goal of the local media business is to (eventually) publish newspapers customized to readers and advertisers, and Peter has a beta test working mydailyonline.com. His career goal is to help develop the personal newspaper (see personalnewspaper.blogspot.com) and reverse the declining growth of the industry.

Peter has been developing free, targeted publications since 1990 when he helped launch the super-successful Friday Home Guide at The Washington Times in Washington D.C. He has created dozens of publications with targeted, free circulation both geographically and demographically. At last count, his free publications generated about $19 million a year.

He has launched publications (magazines as well as tabloids) for real estate, job-hunting, parenting, seniors, brides, first-time homebuyers, technology experts, etc. He has generated tens of millions of dollars in incremental revenue for newspapers.

In the last five years he has also created targeted online products like NewsArtStore.com and Newcomer.com and MortgageTrak.net, which today bills millions of dollars a year.

In Charlottte, for The Observer, Peter created the CharlotteMagazineNework.com, knitting together a dozen magazines that cumulatively prints nearly 300,000 copies a month, and thus created a discounted advertising buy that covers the city geographically and demographically, offering informed advertisers dozens of ways to accomplish their glossy print marketing.

"I build media products," says Peter. "Launching a new newspaper or magazine or website is like building a house -- it takes a step by step process and experience to be successful. It takes teamwork as well as hardwork. The risk is considerably limited by knowing what you are doing."