The News Mirror will stop production

by Travis McWhorter / CEO

When I embarked on my business career 43 years ago in Wichita Falls, freshly graduated from Midwestern with a BBA, it was one of my goals to appear on the cover of a major publication at least once in my lifetime. I had envisioned the Wall Street Journal, Forbes or Fortune. Today, I believe that goal has been accomplished. The News Mirror in the last 3 and 1/2 years has grown in stature and has been listed in Wikipedia as the weekly paper for this market. Maybe my role as CEO of Persidea, Inc. did influence the picture choice; it is still a source of pride to be on the cover. However, it is disappointing that my story this time deals with the decision we have made in discontinuing production of the paper. This publication began as a media kit run in August 2005 as an 8 pager. Within that first test issue I wrote an article entitled "The Mission and The New Mirror". Persidea had a purpose then in publishing the paper in our Wichita Falls facility. We had the capacity on our presses and we wanted to balance out the production for our employees and to keep our printed product competitive for our clients. The other point made was that we did not want a political publication. We wanted it to be profitable for our ad clients, fun and fulfilling for our readers. We also pledged to avoid competing directly in a market with our print customer's main advertising clients. We feel we have accomplished our points for starting the publication, and particularly the goal to balance production, but now this has become a problem. Recently, we took a look at some potential new clients and realized we might have a difficult time, during certain weeks, servicing them should we continue our own production unless we added some additional capacity to our press lines. The current environment in the business world made it more logical to stop our company-owned production rather than risk new capital. That logic brought us to the decision to stop our publication and seek new clients. This down time will work out well for Persidea as we plan to take the publication on a hibernation, rethink its format and we will announce in late March on both TheNewsMirror.com and Persidea.com websites The News Mirror's future. All considerations will be evaluated. We will look into finding a buyer for the publication. Contact Todd McWhorter or me soon if you have a real interest. We will also consider revamping it for the current market, moving it to other markets where we could expand it and even making it totally a web based product. We encourage our readers to write or call us with your opinions. The reality could be that The News Mirror may have run its course and you may be reading the last one ever. Persidea really appreciates your support in making The News Mirror a solid choice for the best weekly in the four counties we served for these last few years. We really appreciate Todd McWhorter, Daniel Barton, Will Revell, Cynthia Houchin, Joe Muterspaugh, Dallas Sauceda and the entire Wichita Falls and Austin crews that made this paper so unique and from the first issue until this latest, always on time. Now, we must go away. The thing I really like best about this final issue is the fact that the main picture on the cover is a collection of covers from some of the many great issues we have brought you. Sharing this cover will always be a source of pride as I have watched a great team of people pour their hearts and souls into this little work of art. Persidea will move on for now as we bring many new services to market and continue to bring you the other fine services to this area from our Wichita Falls facility and all across Texas and the USA from all three of our Texas-based facilities. On behalf of Persidea and all its wonderful employees in Temple, Austin and of course Wichita Falls, we thank you very much for the ride and we will continue look for ways to make your trip down the road of life as rewarding to you as it has been and will continue to be for us in serving you in the future.