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Springing
forward with new sections
by
Paula C. Squires
Virginia
Business
March 2004
March is often a month of change with blustery winds
giving way, finally, to the first hints of spring. And
so it is at Virginia Business as we continue
to tweak content with the goal of providing more comprehensive
coverage. New this month are two sections — Commercial
Real Estate Quarterly and Technology
in Virginia — which give us opportunities
to punch up our reporting on these sectors.
As the name implies, the sections will run four times
a year. In the real estate section, our focus will be
on people, deals and trends while in technology we will
include brief business profiles and news briefs. Another
change is an expanded Around
the Old Dominion department. We have doubled the
space for this feature. To create more room, however,
we are discontinuing a long-running department, Minding
Your Business.
This feature, which provided a space for offbeat business
items that normally would not have found their way into
our news pages, has been around since the magazine began
in 1986, and it’s not without some regret that
we bid it farewell. Originally, the feature was called
“None of Your Business,” a clue to its sassy
nature. Back in the 1980s, one of my first assignments
for Virginia Business was to write a story
for this department. My subject was a guy who had started
an imaging business that purportedly could show people
what they would look like in 20 years. I considered
it a heck of a deal: the magazine was willing to pay
me to glimpse into my future and, if I didn’t
like my age-enhanced looks, I had plenty of time to
change them. I still have the photos of my saggy face,
although I haven’t been brave enough yet to pull
them out and make any comparisons. As always we welcome
your feedback on our changes. Comments can be sent to
talkback@va-business.com.
Also in this month’s issue, our cover
story highlights the rapid growth of small, community
banks. As big banks seem to get ever bigger through
a recent wave of mergers, community banks have swooped
in, wooing customers with personal, hometown service.
Richmond-based writer Garry Kranz interviewed several
of these bankers and looks at their success and plans
for survival.
Another project we planned to publish this month —
a follow up to our look at high-volume
hospitals and doctors which ran in January —
has been postponed so that we can further refine our
data. Rounding out the March report is a regional look
at Fredericksburg and a list
of business-friendly golf courses.
Finally, be sure to check out our April issue, which
will include an interview with U.S. Treasury Secretary
John W. Snow, known to many Virginians as the former
CEO of CSX Corp. It took the secretary a couple of months
to work Virginia Business into his busy schedule; we’re
just glad he didn’t tell us to mind our own business.
Paula
C. Squires
Managing Editor
psquires@va-business.com
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