Photography by Lauren Allen.

A few weeks ago, the Advocate hosted its fall Q&A at North Haven Gardens. First of all, thank you to everyone who came and had their burning questions at the ready and thank you to North Haven Gardens for hosting us. And to those who were unable to attend, here is a recap of what we discussed:

Introduction:

My name is Kelsey Shoemaker and I’m the editor at the Preston Hollow Advocate. Although I’ve been here since July, everyone has been super nice and welcoming. Before this, I was the digital editor at Fort Worth Magazine and also have worked at D Magazine, Dallas Observer, Star Local Media and also worked in media positions at a few restaurants here in Dallas because I do love food. While being the editor so far, I didn’t know a lot about home design before but I’ve been very quickly learning that and it’s becoming my favorite thing to write about other than that I love writing culture which Preston Hollow is full of that. I’m very excited to be here!

I’m Alyssa High, I am an editor who’s worked on all the neighborhoods and covered Preston Hollow for a couple of years in multiple different capacities. I tend to focus on development, crime and city council beats, but I do a little bit of everything.

Photography by Lauren Allen.

The questions:

AH: One of the questions we get all the time is ‘I’m constantly getting emails for donations, what’s that about?’ During COVID, we made the industry transition into a nonprofit. A lot of publications are also doing the same thing. We get money from sales and we are also able to get funding from national grants and grants from nonprofit journalism entities. It helps us support our local journalism.

I’m a resident of Preston Hollow and I’d like to know about your distribution process. I love the Advocate Magazine and it’s a great way to know what’s going on in your neighborhood. Most of us who live in Preston Hollow feel like we don’t know our neighbors or know what’s going on. How can I get your magazine?

KS: We have over 75 distribution racks throughout Preston Hollow in restaurants, offices, businesses because there’s so many it is hard to locate where they are. If you send us your location we can help pinpoint ones for you. I know it doesn’t go beyond apartment gates but if you send us your location or email address, we can get in touch and find a way to get that to you.

AH: The majority of Preston Hollow residents who are active readers get it delivered to their houses. We are constantly discussing how we can expand distribution throughout the district so if it currently doesn’t come to your house, we can work that out if you send us an email with your address and we can mail it to you. We are working on getting it distributed to more houses as well as the racks.

What do you guys consider Preston Hollow and how do you decide what to cover?

KS: We cover everything that’s west of 75 and under 635 and all the way to Love Field. Although that’s not traditional Preston Hollow. We extend our reach just because we know they frequent places like the Galleria and same as Bluffview and Love Field. We try to cover as much as we can because we know it’s important.

AH: We often get questions about Love Field and areas around Love Field isn’t necessarily the same cultural neighborhood as Old Preston Hollow or the traditional boundaries of Preston Hollow, but everything close to your neighborhood are going to be things that affect your neighborhood as well as the council districts that extend further.

What about the Best Of contest and what if I wanted to nominate a business?

AH: We’re doing Best Of a little bit different this year and next week, we’ll be sending out a further description of how we’re going to be doing that. If you want to nominate a business across any of the categories you can email our development director Ali at aquintero@advocatemag.com

If I know something that y’all should be writing about, what should I do?

KS: You can email me at kshoemaker@advocatemag.com . We are always looking for anything to cover and while we have our finger on the pulse on most things, it helps us out a lot to get other people’s voices and what they want to be covered. We are in touch with home associations, but it also gives us a little bit more help when people lend their voices too.

AH: Your neighborhood is our neighborhood and we care about what you care about. We can’t get to everything at once so knowing what is important to the area we cover is at the top of our priority list.

AH: A popular question we’ve got in the past is some of our magazines had Preston Hollow Lifestyle on it and we’ve shifted that to be more congruent with the other magazines. While the lifestyle pieces are very important to the Preston Hollow community, so are crime, city council and development. It’s more of a reflection of that shift into very hyper-local journalism.

 

Note: This is not a direct transcript of the Q&A. Sections have been edited for clarity and brevity.