The Barbey–Quier–Hawley story begins with the Reading Eagle itself. In 1868, Jesse G. Hawley and William S. Ritter founded the paper that would anchor Reading’s public life for generations. In 1895, editor Edwin Addams Quier married Hawley’s daughter, Helen, knitting the Hawley and Quier lines into a single newspaper family. Their daughter, Catharine Emma Quier, later married John Edward Barbey Sr., linking the Eagle to the Barbey industrial fortune that grew from the Reading Glove & Mitten Company into Vanity Fair Mills and ultimately VF Corporation. Their son, Edwin Quier “Bud” Barbey, became the father of Peter D. Barbey—bridging the newspaper tradition and the manufacturing legacy and setting the stage for Peter’s role a century after the Eagle was born.
Jesse G. Hawley
Through the mid-twentieth century, the Hawley–Quier–Barbey line sustained the Reading Eagle as a hometown institution while Vanity Fair/VF expanded nationally. By the late family era, the Reading Eagle Company encompassed the daily newspaper, WEEU-AM, South Schuylkill News, REP Printing, and Pretzel City Productions. Peter D. Barbey stepped into this lineage as president and CEO during the most turbulent period modern newspapers had faced, with print advertising in decline and digital habits eroding the business model that once paid for robust local reporting.
Reading Eagle at 6th and Penn Streets
While guiding the family firm in Reading, Barbey also entered New York media. In 2015 he acquired The Village Voice through Black Walnut Holdings, aiming to stabilize a storied brand that had shaped arts and political coverage for decades. The print edition ended in 2017, and in 2018 the publication ceased new editorial work while a team preserved and digitized its archives—a recognition that cultural memory mattered even when the traditional ad engine no longer did.
Back home, the financial headwinds struck harder. In March 2019 the Reading Eagle Company entered Chapter 11 after years of family subsidies. That spring, a federal judge approved the sale of the Eagle and related assets to MediaNews Group (Digital First Media), ending 151 years of local ownership. The handover marked a pivot point in Berks County civic life: longtime employees moved on, newsroom rhythms changed, and a rare piece of independent media heritage passed from family stewardship to a national chain.
After the sale, Barbey’s public profile centered on investing and philanthropy. He leads a family investment office and serves on national nonprofit boards, with a focus that he, his wife, Pam, and their son, Matthew, have emphasized for years: free expression, human rights, arts and culture, and community health. That work has included support for PEN America’s Freedom to Write initiatives and service with organizations such as Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. Closer to home, the family helped lead the United Way of Berks County’s 2016 campaign and contributed to regional relief efforts during the COVID-19 response, maintaining a tangible link to the community even as the company nameplate on Penn Street changed.
Why this history matters to Berks County is simple: local news is civic infrastructure. The Hawley, Quier, and Barbey generations produced the paper many residents grew up with—chronicling everything from high-school box scores and Schuylkill River floods to city-hall debates and church bazaars. The 2019 transition did more than change ownership; it altered how Reading gets, values, and pays for its information. Understanding the family behind the masthead helps explain how we arrived at today’s media landscape.
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