Editor's Corner
Have You Met Our New Editor?
Please join me in welcoming Peter Galuszka to the staff of Virginia Business. Our new executive editor has a big challenge ahead of him.

Several months ago, the editorial staff reached a consensus that it was time for a shake up. We wanted to redesign the magazine, and we needed to rethink our story mix. Serving readers who were doing business at Internet speed, we adopted a new mantra: more, shorter, tighter. More articles, with more variety. Shorter articles, taking less time to read. Tighter focus, explaining more clearly what’s in it for the reader.

In my mind, I’d imagined a design similar to Business Week, with lots of charts, maps, tables and informational graphics to help the reader absorb information quickly. We’d still keep our local focus on the Virginia economy and business community. But we’d put more effort into packaging the information.

Meanwhile, we were grappling with the fact that the Internet has the potential to alter the publishing landscape beyond recognition. It’s already changing our business. Currently, we’re working on a sponsored special section and two new annual publications that were conceived from the start as combined print and Internet products. In the future, we expect that advertisers may value us as much for our ability to publish on the World Wide Web as our ability to put ink on paper. Instead of dishing off text and graphic files to our Web editor, our entire editorial staff must develop the ability to think in Web terms from the inception of a product.

That’s where we were heading even before our previous editor, Karl Rhodes, announced his decision to move upstairs to Media General, our parent company. Galuszka gave us a call soon after. As fate would have it, he ran the Cleveland bureau for Business Week and reported on businesses in a four-state region. Previously he’d covered the fall of communism as Moscow bureau chief and served as international news editor. Not only was he steeped in the Business Week editing methodology, he had reported, written and narrated BW Online’s first Webcast documentary. Most fortuitous of all, he was seeking to relocate to the mid-Atlantic.

In the conversations that followed, Galuszka and Virginia Business decided that we’d make a good fit. He came on board in late March with three directives: lead the editorial staff in the magazine redesign; raise the bar for editorial standards; and reposition the staff to publish both in print and on the Web.

It’s a tall order, but Galuszka is the man for the job. Besides his 14 years of experience with one of the premier business publications in the world, he brings fresh ideas and perspectives. Like me, he’s a Navy brat. Growing up, he lived all around the country — though mostly in the Southeast. Although he’s no stranger to Virginia — he wrote for the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk and the Richmond Times-Dispatch early in his career — he’s worked in Moscow, New York and Cleveland. Exposed to life outside Virginia, he’s willing to take a dispassionate look at some of our parochial conceits and enthusiasms.

We’re excited to have him. And after an 18-year absence, he’s looking forward to reacquainting himself with the commonwealth.