Challenge
In 2004, magazine, which was created in part as promotional vehicle for some of the borough's leading cultural institutions, was sold to a group of private investors led by Joe McCarthy, president of McCarthy Communications. He envisioned an independent magazine with a wider journalistic and cultural mission. His goal was to better serve the neighborhoods that have evolved as Brooklyn has gone from a backwater to an urban phenomenon. The challenge was to create that more ambitious publication for the most culturally diverse entity in the world while delivering high-end readers for advertisers.

Solution
The first step was to unleash the magazine from the constraints required by the cultural institutions, since good journalism requires an objectivity that is impossible when your subjects control your content. He widened 's purview to address the key challenges confronting the borough, and deepened the cultural and social coverage. Working with talented local and national journalists, he published hard-hitting stories on real-estate development, corrupt judges, and conflicts among new Brooklynites, as well as top-of-the-line service pieces.

He used sophisticated direct-mail response techniques to qualify the target audience, mailing the magazine into Brooklyn's more affluent neighborhoods and continuing to reach the members of its chief cultural institutions. He refined the quarterly mailings of over 60,000 issues and began to offer the magazine for sale on newsstands. 's enthusiastic and loyal readership grew, and there was not only critical success but a growing subscriber base. Advertisers took the magazine seriously. However, Brooklyn's renaissance had not yet achieved the critical mass of high-end advertisers needed to support it. After two and a half years and eleven issues, the revitalized suspended publication, and it was returned to its previous owners.