Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
The July 27, 2005 front page of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet

Owner	Tribune-Review Publishing Company
Publisher	Richard Mellon Scaife
Founded	1992
Headquarters	503 Martindale St. 3rd Floor Pittsburgh, PA 15212 United States

Website: pittsburghlive.com

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is a newspaper in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. It was founded in 1992 as an offshoot of the Greensburg Tribune-Review following a press strike at the two previously dominant Pittsburgh dailies.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Greensburg Tribune-Review and affiliated dailies claim a Sunday circulation of 221,000 readers. They are published by the Tribune Review Publishing Company, which was purchased by Richard Mellon Scaife in 1970. The newspaper is generally considered to have a conservative opinion page.

1 Investigative reporting
2 Other reporting
3 Competition
4 Merger
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Investigative reporting

The newspaper is known for its lengthy investigations [1] into allegations of corruption, [2] [3] allegations of government malfeasance, [4] social injustice, [5] [6] and complex sports issues. [7] [8]

Carl Prine, an investigative reporter for the newspaper, conducted a probe with the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes that highlighted the lack of security at the nation's most dangerous chemical plants following the September 11, 2001 attacks. [9] The reporters were charged with trespassing at one plant during their investigation, [10] but were acquitted when the judge accepted that the story had been in the public interest. [11]

[edit] Other reporting

One Tribune-Review story went national when Colin McNickle, editor of the newspaper's editorial page, attended a July 26, 2004 speech at the Massachusetts State House given by Teresa Heinz Kerry, who had been the subject of two attacks in the Tribune-Reviews's opinion pages. Following the speech there was a dispute between McNickle and Heinz Kerry over her use of the term "un-American activity".

[edit] Competition

The chain of Scaife newspapers competes against the larger Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In 2005, a report by the Audit Bureau of Circulations determined that the Post-Gazette had lost 5,000 subscribers on its Monday-to-Friday deliveries, [12] while the Greensburg Tribune-Review and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review lost 8,000 subscribers Monday to Friday, with deeper losses on Sundays. [13]

Although the circulation slumps are part of a nationwide trend in the U.S., both the Tribune-Review and Post-Gazette lost readers at a greater rate than the national average of 1.6 percent for dailies with more than 100,000 subscribers. [14]

In 2003, the Tribune-Review launched an afternoon tabloid, Trib PM. [15].

[edit] Merger

Edward H. Harrell, the president of the Tribune Review Publishing Company, announced in January 2005 that most of the regional editions of the paper would have their newsroom, management, and circulation departments merged and that staff reductions would follow. The merged papers include the Tribune-Review of Greensburg, the Valley News Dispatch of Tarentum, The Leader-Times of Kittanning, The Daily Courier of Connellsville and the Blairsville Dispatch. The Valley Independent, the only paper with a unionized newsroom and contract, will not be affected. [16] The company incorporated as Trib Total Media in the summer of 2005, and purchased Gateway Newspapers, a community publication group servicing approximately 22 communities in and around Pittsburgh's Allegheny County.

Two managers were immediately laid off; the exact number of proposed redundancies was not announced. [17] In September 2005 Harrell announced his retirement as president of Tribune-Review Publishing Company, effective December 31, 2005. He had served as president since 1989.[18] Several staff writers were laid off in December, 2005, as two of Gateway's newspapers were discontinued.