Publisher Douglas Heuck started Pittsburgh Quarterly in 2006 after 20 years as an award-winning investigative reporter and business editor at Pittsburgh’s major daily newspapers. Pittsburgh Quarterly’s mission is to bring outstanding magazine journalism to the greater Pittsburgh area.

In each of the magazine’s first 10 years, PQ has led the magazine category of western Pennsylvania’s main competition for journalistic excellence — the Golden Quill Awards, sponsored by the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania and judged by out-of-town journalists. In 2014 and 2015, the magazine has won a prestigious Folio Eddie Award in the global magazine industry’s biggest competition for journalistic excellence.

Pittsburgh Quarterly eschews the standard regional magazine format of publishing advertising-driven editorial. Instead of publishing list-based content on, for instance, best doctors, best dentists, best lawyers, etc., we focus on delivering the best writing, photography and illustrations about the most timely and pertinent topics in Pittsburgh. In this regard, Pittsburgh Quarterly has become one of the nation’s premier regional magazines for editorial excellence.

Our sweet spot — which other media outlets can’t reach — is the very top echelon of the demographic scale. PQ readers comprise the wealthiest, most influential media audience in western Pennsylvania. More than 73 percent have a net worth exceeding $1 million, and the net worth of 54 percent exceeds $2 million. Their tremendous purchasing power is largely immune to economic cycles. Not surprisingly, our audience is also the region’s most educated — more than 75 percent have earned bachelor’s and/or graduate degrees. Our readers are Pittsburgh’s key decision makers and opinion leaders in every sector of the regional economy.

A journalistic innovator, Heuck has been writing about Pittsburgh for 30 years, as an investigative reporter and business editor at The Pittsburgh Press and Post-Gazette and as the founder of Pittsburgh Quarterly. His newspaper projects ranged from living on the streets disguised as a homeless man to penning the only comprehensive profile in the latter years of polio pioneer Dr. Jonas Salk to creating a statistical means of judging regional progress that has led to similar projects across the country. Heuck’s works have won numerous national, state and local writing awards. His work has been cited in the landmark media law case “Food Lion vs. ABC news.”