Categories: OLD Media Moves

Pennsylvania business weekly celebrates fifth anniversary

The Business Weekly, which is produced by the Reading Eagle in Pennsylvania, is celebrating its fifth anniversary of its launch.

Andy Andrews, the business editor of the Eagle, writes, “The business journal began to fill a void for Berks business-to-business news.

“‘There was a desire for the community to improve business coverage,’ said Peter D. Barbey, president and CEO of Reading Eagle Company. ‘Reading’s incredibly deep and loaded with stories about business and industry. This is still a place that you can start a serious business and succeed.’

“Barbey, whose family is longtime owners of the Reading Eagle, came to the company as the chief executive in the summer of 2011 and quickly helped inspire and promote the launch of Business Weekly.

“‘When I came here, I challenged the staff to build a publication built around business,’ Barbey said. ‘And then soon after to build a magazine around the rural lifestyle, which is Berks Country. But we decided we would do both. We did them in succession. Berks Country was a more complicated product because there was no product like it. Whereas Business Weekly, when you think about it, was really an outgrowth of the business section, which already existed.’

“In late 2011, the Great Recession had been dragging on business and consumer spending. The housing market was making a sluggish and painful recovery. The word on the street – as people looked toward alternative, digital methods of reading the news – was that newspapers in general were in their death throes.

“But that simply wasn’t happening.

“‘It proves that people are interested in reading Business Weekly, they are interested in advertising in it, and it is primarily a print product,’ said Harry J. Deitz Jr., associate publisher and Reading Eagle editor. ‘So for those people who think that print is just about done, that’s not true yet. And these kinds of publications are proving that.”