Nobody’s flipped out. Yet.

But flip the Metropolitan over and you’ll enjoy MEXPORT MAGAZINE, an innovation in clean technology: Changing the way you hold the paper. What a concept! You should be seeing more flip books in the future. And we’d be happy to do one for you, as we’ve done for the Otay Mesa Chamber of Commerce. It’s not too expensive. And it’s tough to beat the distribution of 30,000 copies of your company’s own business magazine distributed countywide to more business owners and professionals than any other business publication in San Diego County, by far.

You’ll also notice the magazine is lighter, but not because we’ve reduced pages. Au contraire, our page-count is up, and we’re going to work it up further with your support. We converted to a stock of paper known as Hibrite, which Sharon Bay at San Diego Family Magazine has been using successfully for more than a decade. It’s lighter, less dense, using less fiber with fewer chemicals than the glossy paper. It’s made primarily from the byproducts of lumber mills — wood chips and sawdust — combined with recycled paper. The finished product itself is easier to recycle. Its carbon footprint is smaller. So is its cost. With advertising sales obviously down in recent months, something had to give. We are reorganizing, upsizing our service and downsizing our expenses. We’re moving our offices, about to sign a lease, and we’ll let you know where as soon as the deal is done. The downturn in print advertising is squeezing us, just like others. Total newspaper ad sales throughout the U.S. dropped 9.4 percent last year to $42 billion, reports the Newspaper Association of America, the worst decline since it started counting in 1950.

Easter is usually a slow day for home sales, but there were no new subdivision ads in the Union-Tribune’s Home section on Easter Day.

Magazines aren’t faring better. According to the Publishers Information Bureau, of 231 titles surveyed, 153 absorbed ad page declines last year, 80 of them by more than 10 percent. Some specialty pubs looked dismal: Scientific American, down 45 percent; U.S. News and World Report, down 37 percent; Rolling Stone, off 32 percent; AARP, down 23 percent; Sports Illustrated For Kids, down 42 percent.

Makes the San Diego Metropolitan Magazine’s first-quarter ad revenue decline of 37 percent look par for the course.

A few magazines improved. Everyday with Rachael Ray grew 38 percent in ad pages. What do we have to do, reposition ourselves as In The Barrel With Terryl? The Business Brain With Tim McClain? Geez.

Two years ago, real estate and lending advertisers comprised about 48 percent of our revenue. We didn’t really feel the decline in advertising from bankers until late last year.

What to do?

Stay the course? No and yes. We’re holding circulation at 30,000 copies, mostly to business owners and professionals such as lawyers, bankers and accountants, about twice the circulation of the Business Journal, about 15 times the normal circulation of the Daily Transcript, about 10 times the circulation of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce magazine published by that Malibu corporation, and about 1.5 times the circulation of the new bizsandiego magazine, which suspended publication last month after putting out fewer than two years of monthlies. Bizsandiego says it’s going quarterly later this year. There’s a thought. Why so often?

We’re maintaining our frequency. A well written, widely distributed monthly magazine is a nice complement to our Daily Business Report at sandiegometro.com, and to our twice-weekly Metropolitan/Uptown Examiner newspaper for legal advertising and our hip monthly North Park News community newspaper. That’s about 10 print editions per month, on top of the Daily Business Report online at sandiegometro.com and broadcast in brief at XLNC1 Classical Music Radio at 104.9 FM. Plus Editor McClain will keep doing his KPBS Editor’s Roundtable gig as long as KPBS will have him, 11 years and counting. We’ll do more flip books. Our specialty publications division, which has published everything from the History of San Diego Rotary to the Balboa Theatre Opening Program, from corporate annual reports to chamber of commerce directories, is at your service.

But we just couldn’t compete with Riviera, San Diego Magazine, bizsandiego and 944 on paper quality and indulgent lifestyles.

So we won’t.

We haven’t raised advertising rates in years, and our adjustments will allow us to continue the bargain prices. If an advertiser wants glossy stock, we will deliver it to more business owners than any other business or lifestyle publication in town. But otherwise we’ll devote our resources to providing more editorial content and bargain-priced advertising 24/7 at sandiegometro.com and on more environmentally friendly paper. That’s what the Metropolitan Magazine has been doing since 1985, and as a team of journalists since the early 1970s. We started on newsprint.

With the proliferation of sexy indulgence magazines and vanity awards ceremonies in local publications, we think our brand of insightful business and civic news dissemination is more important than ever. Sandiegometro.com alone contains more purely business and economic information about San Diego than any other Website available to the public at no charge. Searchable back to 1996, sandiegometro.com averages about 50,000 unique visitors to each edition, with many of those returning enough to push the total visitor stat to 150,000. Some 2.0 million to 3.1 million files are called up from sandiegometro.com each month.

The team behind the Metropolitan, sandiegometro.com, Uptown Examiner and North Park News is worthy of your support.

Editor Tim McClain has matured into the longest-serving business editor in San Diego. Read his cover story on Cheryl and Greg Cox and you'll appreciate the insight that comes from decades of covering the local scene. Managing Editor Manny Cruz has been for some years now the longest-serving Latino journalist in San Diego. Associate Editor Terence Burke, columnists Patrick Osio, Terryl Gavre, Rich Acello, Gary London, Alan Nevin, Austin Lynas and Jean Lowerison serve up more local business reporting experience than any other team of writers in San Diego. And we couldn’t be more pleased to see the return of reporters Lynne Carrier and Sandy Pasqua to help us with the MEXPORT and Chula Vista themes this month, two areas they know so well.

We have all taken deep pay cuts and made some serious adjustments. We disclose this to you because we are business journalists and can’t expect other business owners to disclose if we don’t practice some openness ourselves.

If you would like to be helpful, tell the advertisers who appear in the Metropolitan that you appreciate their intelligence. Buy their products and services when you can. If you run a business, buy your own print advertising here when it makes sense: Spend less, reach a larger audience of decision-makers and let us republish your ad at sandiegometro.com for no additional charge.

Want your own magazine? Commission us to flip the book. I’m at (619) 398-8920 or gary@sandiegometro.com.

And please, feel free to send a $30 check payable to San Diego Metropolitan to our old address – 530 B St., Suite 1510, San Diego, CA 92101 — and we’ll be sure to tell the U.S. Postal Service our forwarding address a soon as we move. We’ll announce our new address through sandiegometro.com ASAP, and in print with the next edition. When was the last time you paid for a Metropolitan Magazine?

Thanks for supporting quality print journalism. It’s rough being literate and productive these days. Warm regards.