Sunday, January 23, 2005
Dickie Scaife is Going DOWN!
I was wondering when he'd join Conrad Black on the scrap heap of failed archconservative newspaper publishers who destroyed their empires in the service of ideology. Here's the scoop, courtesy of rival paper the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Shakeup at the Tribune-Review; layoffs expected at all newspapers Management consolidated at Pittsburgh office; editorial, advertising affected The Tribune-Review Publishing Co. yesterday announced sweeping changes in its management structure, essentially reducing four of its six newspapers to large news bureaus and shifting their management, editing and design to offices of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Employees at the company's onetime flagship paper, the Tribune-Review of Greensburg, said they were told to expect layoffs there as editing of that newspaper moves from its offices on Cabin Hill Drive in Greensburg to the Clark Building on Pittsburgh's North Side. "They told us point-blank that there would be layoffs," said one employee at the Greensburg Tribune-Review who, like others, asked not to be identified. Workers at all of the affected papers said they were told the layoffs would hit every one of the company's daily publications, including Pittsburgh. On Tuesday, Tom Stewart, the editor of the Greensburg Tribune-Review, announced that he was leaving the paper, the first signal of the management shakeup that insiders said they expect to continue for several weeks.The bitter irony? The Greensburg Tribune-Review is what's keeping Scaife's empire afloat. But he's willing to sacrifice it in a last-ditch effort to keep alive his vile Pittsburgh edition:
Greensburg, which has a circulation estimated at 99,000 on Sundays and 53,000 weekdays, was the first of the papers purchased by Richard Mellon Scaife, an heir to the Mellon banking and oil fortune and a longtime underwriter of conservative political causes. Scaife established a Pittsburgh edition of his newspaper in December 1992, toward the end of an eight-month strike that put The Pittsburgh Press, the city's then-dominant newspaper, out of business. Sources close to the publisher said the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has failed to turn a profit in its 12 years of existence, and the Greensburg edition has subsidized the effort. Lou Ottey, who was fired as circulation manager for the Greensburg paper last week, said a general downturn in newspaper circulation compounded problems because daily newspapers in Connellsville, Monessen and Kittanning included delivery of the Sunday Tribune-Review, and when those papers lost circulation, the Tribune-Review's Sunday figures were also hit. The Valley News Dispatch produces its own Sunday edition. Last night, in Greensburg, one mid-level editor complained bitterly about the planned reductions in staff. "For years we financed their shenanigans in Pittsburgh and now they've turned on us," he said.I'd say it's time for somebody -- like, oh, maybe Warren Buffett -- to move to Pittsburgh, hire up the fired T-R staff, and start a nice sensible daily paper.
More blogs about politics.
