Oh, how time flies.

Early next year, we will mark the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Journal of Business, and my 40th anniversary of employment at this newspaper I still love, and serving a community I treasure.

We published this special section, not necessarily to celebrate us, but to commemorate the evolution of our business community over those four decades through the voices of business leaders who have helped or are now helping to make it as vital as it is. We hope you enjoy those articles in the following pages.

In the meantime, I love to dredge up the following yarn I’ve shared before. So if you will indulge me perhaps one last time, I'd like to tell you the story of how a new publication beat the odds in a difficult industry, and survived as that industry became more challenging.

It was a chilly Saturday morning in early February 1986, and all six staffers of the Journal of Business were scrubbing the dingy walls and windows of the inauspicious office space that would become our upstart newspaper’s first home, in an old warehouse building along Division Street near Sprague Avenue.

We had nothing. No office equipment. No furniture. No stationery or business cards.

We did have a desire — manifested that morning with each stroke of a dirty sponge, and in the 40 years to follow, with each stroke of the pen, whether on a news story or an advertising contract.

Our first issue was nearly to press that winter morning, orchestrated from our homes and pulled together in the back room of a commercial printer that had trustingly given us credit.

I also remember vividly the morning after the 28-page premiere issue miraculously went to press a few days later. Our office space seemed dauntingly bare. A single working telephone sat on the carpet, and in a corner stood a handful of secondhand chairs left by an office supply store that had vacated the building. Skeptical of the startup’s financial depth, I bought myself an inexpensive desk and placed atop its imitation-oak surface an Osborne computer I had brought from home. After all, there was little time to waste. We had another paper to get out.

So went the early days of the Journal of Business.

Our sales “department” consisted of four people, headed by co-founder Scott Crytser, and our news team amounted to Editor and co-founder Norman Thorpe and me. We also lassoed a gifted artist seemingly on his way out of town, and managed to detain him as our contract graphic artist.

We often would run staff-written stories in our paper without bylines, embarrassed that we only had two staff bylines we could print. Every ad sale, meanwhile, was meritorious. No one knew of the Journal, and only the bold were willing to risk their ad budgets on an unproven publication during unsettling economic times. The sales team would ring a small bell, placed strategically in the middle of our office, each time an advertisement was sold. Its sound was music to our ears. We still have that bell today.

In those early days, as we made our mistakes and the paper struggled to make payroll, we were amazed at the support we received. Spokane was embracing us as its own, and our confidence grew. Congratulatory letters began arriving from business, civic, and government leaders. Advertisers told us customers were mentioning our name. We knew we had something going, and it turned out we would be fortunate enough to ride numerous ups and downs in the Spokane economy for the next four decades.

The Journal is bigger today and became a subsidiary of Cowles Co. 30 years ago, when founders Crytser and Thorpe sold the paper to pursue other interests.

In recent years, our industry has been turned on its head, as publications fight for the attention of readers bombarded with information from too many sources. Yet we have thrived, seeking to provide content not easily found elsewhere and amassing loyal readers. These days, we do far more than publish a bi-weekly newspaper. We also publish daily and weekly email newsletters, operate a news website, host events, produce podcasts, and publish specialty magazines, both for ourselves and our partners.

Perhaps the biggest change over the years has been our presence here. It’s a rare occurrence now when we have to explain to someone locally what the Journal is. Top executives and managers welcome us into their offices and factories. Advertisers support us with their pocketbooks, as do our loyal readers. This more than anything is why I still love to come to work, so many, many years after that Saturday spent cleaning up the Journal’s first humble home.

Today, I am grateful for you. While our team works extraordinarily hard, it is you who has made us successful. Thank you for that loyalty and support. As we enter our fifth decade, we honor you.

Paul Read is publisher of the Journal of Business.