Vendor celebration

Northwestern Financial Review, Aug 15-Aug 31, 2004 by Bengtson, Tom

In journalism school, they teach budding reporters about the "great wall" that separates advertising and editorial. Reporters are to have nothing to do with advertisers because it might compromise their ability to write unbiased stories about particular companies in the news. This is a reasonable framework for big, daily newspapers where readers expect straightforward reports on a wide range of topics. Although, we all know that even at the best newspapers, stories inevitably reflect some kind of bias.

Trade journals like North * Western Financial Review are not watch-dogs the way daily newspapers are. We leave the "gotcha" journalism to the big dailies. North * Western Financial Review has a very small staff, so small that it would be impossible to divide our staff into people who only handle advertising and people who only handle editorial. We all handle both, and in our case that is a good thing.

Because the people active in community banking in the Upper Midwest make up a relatively small universe, it is virtually impossible to separate advertising from editorial. Vendors are an integral part of the community banking arena; we take story suggestions from vendors as seriously as we take those from community bankers. The key is honesty and clarity. We try to clearly identify the sources in our stories, and we always list the company associated with contributing authors.

You don't have to think for very long before you realize that the vendor community is absolutely essential to the success of banking. Vendor innovations make it possible for community banks to offer more products than ever before. Vendors offering software, services and hardware give bankers the opportunity to serve more people, more efficiently and more completely.

And North * Western Financial Review could not survive without strong support from vendors. We know that companies marketing to community bankers have many opportunities to spend their advertising dollars. We are forever mindful of the fact that they choose North* Western Financial Review. Some companies have been part of the magazine for decades. We work hard to make the relationship win-win-win for readers and vendors as well as ourselves.

This first-ever North * Western Financial Review Buyers' Guide is a celebration of companies serving the banking industry. I think you will find the articles provided by vendors to be very interesting. You can make the most of this special edition by keeping it close-at-hand throughout the coming year.