eader research we conducted recently accomplished two things. It confirmed my hunch that Site Selection remains the most authoritative publication in its niche. And it provided clues about how to keep it that way going forward. It yielded many other benefits, as well, but these are the points I want to stress here.
      To the first point, we asked readers which publications they turn to first for insights into the dynamics at work in their industry. Respondents had to write in the names of those publications -- no choices were provided. By far, Site Selection ranked No. 1 with 35.7 percent saying so, followed by The Wall Street Journal (24.6 percent) and Business Week (6.8 percent). Similarly, we asked readers which publications they turn to first for insights into how to better execute their job responsibilities -- again, respondents had to write in their answers as no selections were offered. Site Selection was at the top of the list for 28 percent of respondents, followed by The Wall Street Journal (18.6 percent) and Harvard Business Review (5.7 percent).
      In both cases, these rankings were true of both the entire universe of respondents and our primary constituency -- the corporate real estate manager or executive whose duties include that function.
      Of interest to our advertisers and future advertisers, the survey revealed that 68 percent of respondents pass their issue of Site Selection on to other people in their organization. Some indicated that more than six others read their issue of the magazine. That means the print ads in reality are viewed by far more than our audited circulation of 44,000 readers.
      We asked readers about which parts of Site Selection they value most, and our state and regional spotlight reports ranked first for the universe of respondents and for the corporate executives who read the magazine. The industry spotlights came in second for these same sets of respondents. We've been writing these types of articles for a long time, but we still relish the challenge to find the key dynamics at work in a state or industry that would influence capital investment decisions. More importantly, these articles are written from the corporate investor's perspective, not the economic developer's. To me, that fact alone is behind the magazine's strong performance in the rankings I cited earlier.
      To the second point, we asked readers about which industries they would like to see written about more frequently. At the top of the respondent universe's list -- and that of corporate real estate managers -- is logistics, distribution and transportation. This more than stands to reason, given the role these functions now play in the global movement of goods unleashed in recent years by e-commerce. As this issue of Site Selection illustrates in multiple places -- such as the cover story on global infrastructure and the logistics feature (on p. 591) -- the role of the real estate asset manager is taking on some important new characteristics, and they have some very real, bottom-line implications. We look forward to unraveling them in the issues ahead and to remaining your key publication source of such insights.

Till next time,