Promotional Spotlight: Bucks County Herald’s River Towns Magazine

Promotional Spotlight: Bucks County Herald’s River Towns Magazine

When the Delaware River Towns Chamber of Commerce approached Joe Wingert, publisher of the Bucks County Herald in the fall of 2018 about creating a lifestyle magazine designed to service their close-knit “community of communities” along the Delaware River towns of southeastern Pennsylvania, he knew it was the perfect project for his team, and specifically for Executive Director, Ann Meredith. He was right. Meredith hit the ground running with the first issue of River Towns Magazine launching in June 2019. The publication now serves as a quarterly lifestyle magazine for the Bucks, Hunterdon and Mercer County Delaware River towns with a sleek design, beautiful images and rich content. By all accounts, the magazine was an instant hit.

River Towns Magazine explores many aspects of life in the area, including fascinating people and places, arts and culture, nature, food, home design, outdoor adventures, local music and seasonal activities. “It is a celebration of our precious corner of the world, and we want to help sustain it,” says Meredith. “With a magazine to call its own, our region now has one unifying publication that pulls all of the river towns together into one big literary celebration about an extraordinary way of life.”

The magazine is geared to the affluent communities that comprise the river towns region, and it shares some of the same coverage and distribution areas with the Bucks County Herald. It has a paid subscription model with a newsstand per issue cost of $4.95, and an annual subscription price of $15 for print issues, $9 for digital.

Wingert reports that the advertising support for the first two issues has come from a blend of loyal Bucks County Herald advertisers and a new source of advertisers who are attracted to the lifestyle-based content and affluent readership. Regarding the readership, Wingert says that while it is the same demographic as their Bucks County Herald readers, it is offering them very different and much-needed content. “I think what was important for us, and what is ultimately important for many newspapers in Pennsylvania,” stressed Wingert, “is that you can develop new, vibrant community publications that will be successful by leveraging the deep and long-standing trust in your newspaper brand.”

For additional information, please contact Ann Meredith at 215-794-2802, or ameredith@buckscountyherald.com.