About Recreation News

The Recreation News Media Group offers travel coverage of the Mid-Atlantic, Caribbean destinations, and cruises with a print edition, online edition, weekly radio program, and weekly opt-in email blast. Recreation News is the largest monthly travel and leisure tabloid in the Mid-Atlantic. We provide our readers with information on family vacation destinations in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Washington, D.C. as well as popular cruise and romantic getaway information. Our lively editorial mix of active outdoor recreation, family vacation destinations, romantic getaways, historic sites, and cultural activities together with our wine, food, video, and music columns offers a rich picture of vacation, getaway, and entertainment possibilities in the Mid-Atlantic and beyond. Each month, our calendar presents hundreds of events, festivals, and activities to help you plan your leisure time. Recreation News, established in 1982, publishes Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Md. printed editions as well as an online edition and searchable archive of past issues. In addition, we present a weekly radio program in Washington that details events and special vacation values in the Mid-Atlantic region.

History

Recreation News was established in 1982 as an independent newspaper that would also serve as the official publication for the League of Federal Recreation Associations (LEFRA). These organizations typically offered a wide variety of activities from sports leagues and bus trips to discounted tickets to theme parks, concerts, and plays. They eventually began offering discounts on insurance, hotels, car rentals, and more. Recreation News was distributed free to members through individual inter-office mail, which insured distribution directly to individual workers' desks. Over the years, LEFRA evolved into a series of different organizations. With the privatization of many government services, membership was opened to private industry as well.

In 1998, the paper was acquired by the Indiana Printing and Publishing Company, an established, century-old, multi-state organization in the newspaper, magazine, and communications industry. In 1999, Karl Teel became the third publisher in the history of Recreation News. Today, the monthly tabloid newspaper has a circulation of more than 100,000, with a readership of one-quarter million, a weekly radio program, and separate editions for Maryland, Washington, D.C., and the Internet. The unique relationship with federal civilian and military recreation organizations remains an important component of the paper's distribution and readership, however, employees at private companies and individual subscribers also make up an additional large segment.