From Baku to Broad Street

Editor's Corner
From Baku to Broad Street:
We're going to get better and have fun, too

By Peter Galuszka
Executive Editor
pgaluszka@va-business.com

As the Russians say, "The situation is real." Here I am closing my first issue as Virginia Business’ new executive editor. Frankly, it’s a dream job. During my 14 years at Business Week, my previous employer, I was mostly a cog in a giant, well-oiled machine. True, I had some memorable moments there, such as editing a fast-breaking cover story in New York about the coup d’etat against Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Two years later, I was in Moscow writing another cover during another coup attempt, this time against Boris N. Yeltsin while machine guns chattered outside our bureau. Most of the time, however, I was more a part of the process than anything else. To be sure, Business Week’s process is a brilliant one. A tremendous amount of thinking, planning, writing, analyzing and editing goes into even the tiniest of stories. The result: Business Week is consistently the nation’s best business newsweekly. My mission in Virginia is to somehow replicate that experience and make Virginia Business better than ever. I am finding the challenge both exhilarating and humbling.

So what does this mean to you, dear reader? Hopefully, you’ll find our stories tighter, more topical and more analytical. With luck and effort, we’ll display them in a better way, with more graphics to ease your digestion of essential facts. Our pieces will be more forward-looking. They won’t just review what has happened, but will try to predict how events might unfold in months ahead. We soon will be completely redesigning the magazine. If you look closely at this issue, you may note that we’ve gone to a slightly smaller type size, and many more changes are on the way. Plus, we plan to have a lot more fun with what we write and how we present it.

We won’t, however, sacrifice Virginia Business’ franchise as the state’s leading business magazine. We will continue to develop our databases on companies and economic conditions so that you will find them even more useful. We’ll make better use of our Web site as a quick and easy way for you to get essential information. Eventually, we’d like to move into Webcasting to feature question and answer sessions with top business leaders and maybe even mini-documentary videos on relevant issues that we will produce ourselves. Soon, we’ll be unveiling two new products: ru ready? will be a new publication to help high school grads figure out what they want to do with their lives, and Virginia Now! will try to attract 26- to 46-year-olds back to the Old Dominion to jobs in the state’s dramatically changed, increasingly tech-heavy economy.

Include me in that group. About a year ago, after much thought, I decided that I wanted to return to Virginia after a 17-year-long journalistic odyssey that took me to spots as exotic as Baku and Bukhara. I knew and admired the Old Dominion, having spent five years with The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk and then two more with the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Media General.

Please bear with me, though, as I adjust to the enormous changes Virginia has undergone since I’ve been away. When I left in 1983, Virginia had neither America Online nor the scores of other Internet firms that have exploded onto the scene. Thalhimer’s and Miller & Rhoades still had flagship stores in downtown Richmond. Prime time television featured "Three’s Company" and the "Love Boat." The Times-Dispatch even carried a front-page story: "Soviet Economy Called Solid." Times have certainly changed. But then, so have I. And so will Virginia Business.