Trib Total Media to drop print edition in Pittsburgh
Company will lay off 20% of workforce
Trib Total Media will stop publishing the print edition of its Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper after Nov. 30 and will lay off about 20 percent of its workforce as it downsizes its print operations and beefs up its digital presence.
The changes and cuts announced Wednesday — including the planned layoffs of 106 employees — are the latest moves in a dramatic restructuring of Trib Total Media that began last year and has included employee buyouts, layoffs, closing some papers, selling others and cutting back delivery in Allegheny County.
On Dec. 1, the company will consolidate printing of all its publications — including the Greensburg and Tarentum editions of the Tribune-Review — at a facility in Tarentum where it prints its weekly newspapers, the Pennysaver shopper, and commercial printing contracts, said Jennifer Bertetto, president and chief executive of the North Shorebased company.
On that same day, the company will offer a free, online-only edition of the Pittsburgh TribuneReview and will continue to publish Pittsburgh news on its website, triblive.com,
“Our commitment to covering news in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County will not change,” Ms.Bertetto said.
The company also will stop publishing two of its 14 weekly papers — the Carnegie SignalItem and the Cranberry Journal — and will consolidate two others in the North Hills — the North Journal and McKnight Journal — into one paper.
Some employees will continue to work in the Newsworks facility in Marshall, which houses some editorial and circulation operations, printing presses that will be idled, and 535 Media, a venture launched last year to develop digital products, including a news site called Upgruv.com, she said.
Since the passing of Richard Mellon Scaife, the TribuneReview publisher who died in July 2014, the company has been undertaking what it has characterized as “a strategic review.”
Cutbacks made last year were not enough to stabilize the company’s finances, Ms. Bertetto said.
The downsizing at Trib Total Media comes as newspaper readership and advertising are declining nationally, and many news organizations are shifting their emphasis from printed papers to online news sites.
Following the recent staff reductions — 95 employees accepted buyout offers earlier this month — the company will have 455 employees, including 388 full-time and 67 part-time workers across its operations, Ms. Bertetto said.
She said of the 106 layoffs, 20 of those employees work in newsrooms in Pittsburgh, Greensburg and Tarentum.
Ms. Bertetto declined to say whether staff would remain at its Pittsburgh newsroom, housed at the D.L. Clark Building on the North Side.
She described the new Pittsburgh online edition as a “micro site” that will include in-depth focus pieces on topics such as politics, health care and business.
The site, which will be published seven days a week, will include interactive content such as crossword puzzles, videos and graphics that may debut there and appear later on triblive.com.
The Tribune-Review began publishing its Pittsburgh paper in 1992.
Earlier that year, when a strike by unions at The Pittsburgh Press and the Post-Gazette forced the city’s two major daily newspapers to halt publication for eight months, the Greensburg TribuneReview increased its distribution in the Pittsburgh region.
When Mr. Scaife lost a bid to buy The Press from Scripps Howard Co., he launched the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
The conservative philanthropist who was the heir to the Mellon banking fortune had started his publishing career by acquiring the Greensburg TribuneReview in 1969.
In September 1981 he started The Daily and Sunday Tribune of Monroeville, which closed at the end of 1982.
For the next several decades, Mr. Scaife expanded his portfolio by buying papers in smaller cities, such as Irwin, Jeannette, Ligonier, Connellsville, Monessen, Kittanning and McKeesport.
The company in 1997 bought the Valley NewsDispatch of Tarentum and the North Hills News Record from Gannett Publishing. In 2003, it acquired Gateway Press, the Pennysaver and 18 suburban papers.
Financial issues
In August 2015, the company acknowledged that Mr. Scaife’s passing had “prompted the board to undertake a strategic review.”
Documents obtained by Mr. Scaife’s daughter and son through an ongoing lawsuit show the publisher drained a family trust fund of $450 million over 20 years, putting more than $400 million of that into his media business.
That fund was empty at his death.
The publisher also created a separate trust fund to support the newspapers, the balance of which has not been publicly revealed. The Scaife estate's state tax return, filed in October 2015, indicates that $630 million of its value was subject to taxes, meaning that portion did not go to family or charities, and could have gone to businesses or a taxable trust fund.
However ample the Trib's endowment may have been, it may now be depleted.
The estate put a $100 million downpayment on the state taxes due and could owe another $300 million in federal taxes, according to court filings by the daughter and son, Jennie Scaife and David Scaife.
The siblings have sued the trustees who permitted the depletion of the family fund.
Jennie Scaife also has challenged the validity of her father's will, which did not mention his children.
Cost-cutting moves
The reorganization began last year with the sale of five weeklies in Westmoreland County, and daily papers in Connellsville and Kittanning.
When the Trib failed to find buyers for The Valley Independent in Monessen and The Daily News in McKeesport, it closed those papers on Dec. 31.
In January, it shuttered a printing plant in Greensburg and consolidated its three dailies — the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Greensburg TribuneReview, and Valley News Dispatch of Tarentum — into one paper under the Tribune-Review banner with three regional editions.
At that time, the Tribune-Review cut its delivery in large pockets of the Pittsburgh region.
Combined print and digital weekday circulation fell 49 percent in the first quarter.