Reading PA Radio: The Reading Eagle Files For Bankruptcy

The Reading Eagle, owned by one of the richest families in America, filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday afternoon as the local-news industry continues to be battered.

According to philly.com, Peter D. Barbey, chief executive officer of the Reading Eagle Co., disclosed the news of the filing to the staff Wednesday.

The company will continue to publish and broadcast under Chapter 11 bankruptcy rules, while it seeks a buyer to take over the Eagle's news and broadcasting legacy, company officials said.

The Reading Eagle has an average daily circulation of more than 37,000 Monday through Friday, and more than 50,000 on Sunday, according to the company. Its companion website, readingeagle.com, averages over 600,000 unique users and 3.2 million pageviews a month.

The weekly South Schuylkill News reaches some 2,800 households in southern Schuylkill County. WEEU, a news/talk station that broadcasts at 830 on the AM dial, has 20,000 watts of power in the daytime, and 6,000 at night.

The first Daily Reading Eagle was published on Jan. 28, 1868 by Ritter & Co., a partnership of William S. Ritter and Jesse G. Hawley, husband of Kate E. Ritter. Reading Eagle Company was incorporated in 1904. The company acquired the Reading Times in 1940 and WEEU radio in 1946. The Reading Times ceased publication in 2002 and the Reading Eagle became the morning newspaper. In 2009, the Reading Eagle began publication on its new press, a 77,000-square-foot addition to its facility at 345 Penn St., Reading. In 2015, the company acquired South Schuylkill News, a weekly newspaper.

The company employs 236 staffers.

The Eagle’s filing is the latest distress signal for newspapers and the news industry in eastern Pennsylvania, with the free tabloid Metro laying off most of its Philadelphia reporting staff two weeks ago, and Spirited Media disclosing this month that it would sell its online news site Billy Penn in Philadelphia.

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The Eagle was founded by Jesse G. Hawley and William S. Ritter in 1868 and has been owned by Hawley’s descendants since then. In the 1950s, author John Updike worked several summers as a copyboy at the Eagle and also wrote several feature articles.

The company retained the media broker Dirks, Van Essen, Murray & April to find buyers.

In 2015, Forbes magazine ranked the Barbey family as the nation’s 48th-richest, worth $6.1 billion. The fount of the family’s wealth was jeans and other clothing manufacturing.

Peter Barbey, through his Black Walnut Holdings, bought the Village Voice in New York City in 2015, the New York Post reported. Barbey shut down the iconic weekly last August.