Rick Shrum

Jim Hough and his family did not have time to unbottle their thoughts. “We were shocked,” he said upon realizing their craft whiskey distillery had been selected Small Business of the Year by the Western Pennsylvania District Office of the Small Business Administration. “There are a lot of small businesses in the Western Pennsylvania territory, […]

Summer is coming and so will the demand for electricity to keep things cool. And so will concerns about having a sufficient supply of energy. The W&J Center for Energy Policy and Management addressed that concern in a recent online newsletter, citing a viable source that said not to worry – for the most part. […]

Helen Campbell and Evency Dorzelma are striving to be big successes with small businesses.

An active activist, Bower-Bjornson is a Southwestern Pennsylvania field organizer with Clean Air Council, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that was founded before the Environmental Protection Agency, before Earth Day and before the modern Clean Air Act.

“If you told me a year ago that I'd be doing this, I wouldn't have believed you,” she said, smiling. There was a lot of research ahead, tons of preparation and a formidable amount of uncertainty.

It is a sparkling project, to be sure. The North Strabane-based company, the nation's largest privately held building materials supplier, has announced it is sponsoring the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree for the third year in a row.

The decision to expand is benefiting many Southwestern Pennsylvania businesses – and this region – according to a recent report from the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. The report, “The Impact of Regional Business Expansion: Why ‘Growing Our Own’ Matters,” was produced by the conference’s Strategy and Research team. Allegheny Conference, a Pittsburgh-based civic leadership […]

An active activist, Bower-Bjornson is a Southwestern Pennsylvania field organizer with Clean Air Council, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that was founded before the Environmental Protection Agency, before Earth Day and before the modern Clean Air Act.

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of stories reflecting on 20 years of gas drilling in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Coal, an energy source that once heated numerous homes across Western Pennsylvania, remains abundant underground. But it continues to lose prominence on the energy grid. Solar and wind power have surpassed coal as sources of electricity generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. EIA said this has occurred not only in the United States, […]