Southwest Michigan’s Second Wave is a weekly online business magazine chronicling people, projects and places moving the region forward.

Coming up on its third anniversary in March, it recently moved beyond its core market of Battle Creek, Benton Harbor, Portage, South Haven and St. Joseph and linked to articles from all four Leader Publications, from Nancy Leonard promoting engineering at Justus Gage Elementary School in Dowagiac and Buchanan’s new anti-bullying program to Cindy LaGrow’s Cassopolis report of three large expansions in the works and GroMart opening in Edwardsburg.

Editor Kathy Jennings said Tuesday Southwest Michigan’s Second Wave is one of Detroit-based Issue Media Group’s eight-state publications.

Jennings said from finding upbeat aspects even in the job-loss-plagued Motor City, grew a network of city-based websites, including Washington, D.C., Denver, Toronto, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Cincinnati.

The staff takes the perceived image of a city and provide an “alternative narrative” with optimistically minded business, technology and entrepreneurial news served with a dash of culture.

Jennings worked 25 years at the Kalamazoo Gazette, covering business, courts and entertainment.

She also edited lifestyle and entertainment sections as well as regional news sections until the end of 2009.

A freelance writer, editor and marketing consultant who works from her home, she has four correspondents and a photographer for original reporting.

Growth and investment news focuses on growing companies, new business, construction, innovation, new jobs and jobs landed by locals and job prospects.

An In the News section shares moments when Southwest Michigan captures the attention of national news media outlets.

Jennings moved to Battle Creek at age 12 from Indiana.

A Central Michigan University graduate, she began her journalism career in 1978 at a community newspaper in Novi. She moved to the Gazette in 1985, living downtown for 15 years and now three houses outside the city limits with an Australia shepherd which demolishes television remote controls with alarming regularity, though a contemporary CMU journalism graduate wrote the definitive bad dog book, “Marley and Me.”

Southwest Michigan Second Wave publishes every Thursday.

You can sign up for free e-mail delivery of its original content.