For The Pilot, 2024 is a special year — it has 13 months, as far as revenue is concerned.
“I don’t know any news organization that said, ‘Hey, we’re going to set a goal of doing one month’s revenue during [a week-long] event,” said David Woronoff, President and Publisher of The Pilot in Southern Pines.
That event is the U.S. Open. When it first came to neighboring Pinehurst back in 1999, Woronoff saw a big opportunity in launching a “pop-up” newspaper, Open Daily.
“The people who are coming to the U.S. Open, they crave information about golf and the U.S. Open, and so we need to provide that to them,” said Woronoff. “Because we are experts in our community, in a way that no other media property is, we’re going to give them a heaping helping of Moore County information, which we did, and that made us the go-to source all the way back in 1999 and we still are today.”