A New Name—and a Bigger Conversation

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Beaver County Almanac.

Those of you who have been with us for a while will notice that we have changed the name on the door. Beaver County Business has become the Beaver County Almanac. This was not done because we had run out of business news, nor because the county had run out of businesses. Both remain plentiful, although some are easier to understand than others.

We changed the name because the publication had gradually outgrown it.

When we began as Beaver County Business, our purpose was straightforward: to tell the stories of the companies, entrepreneurs, industries and economic forces shaping Beaver County. Those stories were too often overlooked by the Pittsburgh media, which tends to discover Beaver County only when a data center is being built, a bridge is falling down or somebody here has done something sufficiently peculiar to attract a television helicopter.

We believed Beaver County deserved journalism of its own. We still do.

But as the publication developed, it became clear that business was only part of the story. Our readers were also interested in local history, transportation, architecture, food, health, politics, personalities and the ordinary peculiarities of life along the Ohio, Beaver and Shenango rivers. They wanted to know about the businesses being built today, but they also enjoyed reading about the trolley parks, vanished boroughs, automobile dealers, airships, green bananas and other subjects that do not fit comfortably beneath the heading “business news.”

Neither, for that matter, do most human beings.

The old name may also have suggested that our publication was intended mainly for businesspeople—the sort of men and women who own three suits, understand depreciation schedules and willingly attend breakfast meetings beginning at 7:30. We value those readers enormously. We simply want to make room at the table for everybody else, including people who have never prepared a quarterly earnings statement and regard 7:30 in the morning as an accusation.

Beaver County Almanac better describes what we are becoming: a publication about the life of this county in all its dimensions.

An almanac traditionally contains a little of everything—facts, forecasts, history, practical advice, and observations about the habits of the people who inhabit a particular place. It is useful without being solemn and informative without requiring the reader to put on a necktie. That seems about right for us.

We will continue covering business and economic development. In fact, business reporting will remain one of our central responsibilities. The opening or closing of a plant, the revival of a downtown storefront, the arrival of a new restaurant and the decisions made by major employers affect all of us, whether or not we carry business cards.

But we also intend to range more widely. We want to recover stories that have nearly disappeared from local memory. We want to introduce you to interesting people, revisit forgotten places, examine the changes reshaping our communities and occasionally pause to consider some modern absurdity that richly deserves consideration. Beaver County has never suffered from a shortage of stories. It has suffered from a shortage of people willing to notice them.

This new publication is not meant to be a museum case in which we place Beaver County under glass and admire what it used to be. History matters because it tells us how we arrived here, but the Almanac must also help us understand where we are going. We want to cover the county as it was, as it is and as it might yet become.

To do that well, we need your help.

Tell us what you want to read. Which communities, businesses, people and institutions deserve more attention? What parts of Beaver County history have been neglected or misunderstood? What local problems should we examine? What traditions should we preserve? What subjects have you searched for elsewhere and failed to find?

We also want to know how we can make the publication more useful. Would you like more short news items, longer historical features, restaurant coverage, community calendars, interviews, photographs, opinion columns or practical guides? Are there recurring features you would look forward to receiving? Is there something we are doing now that could be done better—or something we should stop doing before it becomes a tradition?

You may not agree with everything we publish. I occasionally disagree with it myself, sometimes by the following morning. But our aim will remain the same: accurate, ethical and engaging journalism rooted in affection for Beaver County, tempered by curiosity and relieved whenever possible by a sense of humor.

The name has changed. The commitment has not.

Beaver County Almanac belongs to the people who read it, share it, criticize it and send us notes beginning, “You may be interested to know…” Those notes are often where the best stories begin.

So welcome to the first issue. Take a look around, tell us what you think, and help us build a publication worthy of the place we call home.