20 Under 40 - 2005 Profile: Rob Clark

PRESSTIME

By Presstime Magazine

First Published: December 2005

Quick, The Dallas Morning News | Editor in Chief

Conventional wisdom says you can't rush brilliance, but you can apparently create a successful tabloid—from concept to hawkers' hands—in less than two weeks.

Under the inventiveness of Rob Clark and his handpicked team of reporters and editors, Quick, a free weekday tabloid published by The Dallas Morning News, was created in November 2003 as an impromptu response to a potential competitor. However, the final product has proven its staying power.

"That two weeks were the craziest 12 days I have ever had professionally, but the most fun," says Clark, 32. "Building a newspaper from scratch is not an opportunity that comes along every day. The freedom and creativity were energizing."

Clark says the first planning meeting he was involved in fell on a Thursday. A small team of staffers developed a prototype over the weekend, and Clark had the following week to recruit an editorial team and create the first issue of the then-20-page paper, which debuted the following Monday, Nov. 10.

Clark oversees all content, tone and design of the Quick print edition, which targets readers ages 18 to 34, and a Web site, www.quickdfw.com, which was redesigned in August 2004. The publication, now up to 40 pages, covers news, sports, entertainment, music, business and popular culture with equal parts timeliness and humor.

Quick has a print distribution of approximately 131,000 copies. In October, the Web site boasted 308,475 unique visitors and more than 1.5 million page views, Clark says.

"You are only as good as the people around you, and the Quick staff is extremely creative and talented," says Clark, who joined the Morning News in 1999 as a music writer. "The personality that shows up every day on the pages of Quick is a direct reflection of the 12 journalists who work in the newsroom."