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Vernon Wise Jr.
Smart Business Pittsburgh | October 2008
president and publisher, Butler Eagle
In an age when almost 87 percent of
American daily newspapers are corp o r a t e -owned, Vernon Wise Jr. is proud to
be in the minority.
The newspaper business runs in Wi s e ’s
blood. For the past century and five generations, the Butler Eagle has been under
the Wise family name. And since 1968,
when Wise Jr. took over for his father as
president and publisher, he has been
doing everything he can to make sure the
newspaper remains ahead of the competition for the next generation.
Staying ahead of business trends is hardly a challenge for Wise — it’s more of a
family tradition. More than 30 years ago,
the Butler Eagle earned international
attention when it became the first newspaper to install a computer terminal in the
newsroom.
“The Eagle has pioneered most of the new
production technology that now exists in
the newspaper industry,” Wise says.
To combat the financial trials that distress the newspaper industry as a whole,
he used his economic savvy from his time
at Princeton University to found a second
company in 1979: Butler Color Press.
“The color press today is much larger than
the Butler Eagle,” Wise says. “It is presently
installing another new $12 million printing
press line. The color press prints millions
of newspaper advertising inserts each
week for national customers.”
In 2003, Wise transformed his businesses by using the Uniliner, the latest
double-width printing press. Again, the
Butler Eagle was the first American
newspaper to adopt a new technology.
Not only did the decision make operations more efficient, but it — once again
— put the limelight on the Wise family
for being at techn o l o g y ’s cutting edge.
But Wise knows there is more to keeping a community newspaper thriving than
just technology, and that is the community itself. The thinking goes something like
this: When the community does well, the
newspaper does well. So Wise invests in
the community. More than $620,000 of
Butler Eagle revenue has been donated to
such organizations as the county community college and the YMCA in the past 15
years. And Wise has sat on the board of
directors for the Butler County chapter of
the Salvation Army for 50 years and is also
on the board of the Community
Development Corporation of Butler
C o u n t y.
HOW TO REACH: Butler Eagle, www.butlereagle.com or (800)
842-8098
