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• January / February
  • Reduce redundancy with integrated financial reporting
  • Income statement classification of certain sales incentives
  • Audits: Can they be more profitable?
  • Change the way you value your practice
  • Burris' magazine lets Baltimore businesses read all about it
  • After Enron: A profession responds
  • In Enron's wake, CPAs remain committed to core values
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Burris' magazine lets Baltimore businesses read all about it

By Bill Sheridan
MACPA Electronic Communications Manager

In the crowded world of business publications, Craig Burris is doing what his big-name competitors can't: He's giving his readers a taste of Baltimore.

With the 38-year-old Burris at the helm, upstart magazine Baltimore SmartCEO is expanding its audience by contracting its reach. While giants like Inc.,Entrepreneur and Fortune cover the world, Baltimore SmartCEO covers its own back yard — and that's just what its readers want.

"Our niche is that our advertisers are local and our editorial focus is local," said Burris. "If you read Inc., you could be reading about a company in Montana, a company in Florida. And while that's nice, you don't really know them. Here, you know who (the businesses) are and you're kind of curious because you hear about them all the time."

Even among local publications, Baltimore SmartCEO stands out by going beyond the daily business headlines. Burris is concerned less with what is happening than with why.

"We don't care that someone is building a new building," he said. "We care about the planning process that went into figuring out how to build the building, why they're building it, the story about how they selected their sub-contractors and the lessons they learned."

That lesson — how to give readers what they want — is one of many Burris has learned through 12 years in publishing.

In 1990, he put his CPA experience to work by co-founding the monthly Delaware Valley Computer User, a regional publication that, under Burris' leadership, quickly expanded to 26 markets across the country. By the time Burris left the company in 2000, Computer User had become arguably the most widely read computer publication in the United States.

Eventually, after witnessing the success of small business publications in Cleveland and Milwaukee, Burris decided the time was right for Baltimore SmartCEO.

"The growing-company focus was similar to Inc. — a magazine for growing companies -- but they were doing it on a regional basis, with local examples of people who were doing neat things and were really involved in their communities. That really excited me," Burris said. "When I read Inc., for two days I can't sleep; I get filled with all of these ideas. Now, when I read SmartCEO, it's a similar feeling. I genuinely believe that SmartCEO is the best and most useful read in Baltimore right now."

A full-time staff of five and a team of freelancers fill each issue with feature articles, columns and departmentalized copy centering on management, leadership, marketing, sales, legal and tax issues, human resources and other areas.

Burris' goal? To make the magazine a source of each reader's professional education, motivation and inspiration. In fact, the initials of those three words — EMI — were used to name the corporation that owns Baltimore SmartCEO: EMI Media.

Eventually, Burris would like to see other publications grow under the EMI umbrella.

"We have somebody who wants to do a regional women's publication, and if she wants to do it and is passionate about it, we're going to try like heck to make that happen," he said. "I'm looking for people who like media and have a vision of something they want to do. We're going to try to make EMI Media a platform to make that happen."

That sounds like the perfect example of the CPA vision statement:

CPAs are the trusted professionals who enable people and organizations to shape their future.

"The time I've spent in public accounting is probably the most informative and important time I've ever spent," Burris said. "(Business) is like being a coach. You put people into position and every move you make plays out in a number three months down the road. The trick of using those skills is to figure out which numbers matter."