How To Pitch: Charlotte

The information in this article is current and accurate

Background: While the Charlotte magazine title has been around for more than 40 years, the current version of the North Carolina city magazine took on a new personality in October 1995, when new owners purchased the name and developed a following from scratch. Editor and associate publisher Richard Thurmond was part of the two-person editorial team that relaunched the Charlotte magazine brand with a lofty goal to be one of the top five magazines in the country. "It wasn't an achievable goal, but it explains the type of magazine [the owners] aspired to be," says Thurmond.

The magazine was sold again to current owner Morris Communications in 2004, but the mission has remained the same. The core of the city's largest magazine and only publication about the city itself, says Thurmond, is to provide a mix of quality storytelling and really strong service with a complete separation of editorial content and advertising. "We want to tell people what they may not know about Charlotte in an interesting and provocative style," he says. "There's so much media out there, and we really want to not waste our readers' time by reading something they already knew about. Even if it's something or someone they already know, we provide a new angle or present it in a way they haven't thought of before."

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