Category: default || By jt3y

Josh Yohe is off Bob Nutting's Christmas card list.

Yohe's column from Friday's Daily News isn't online, so you'll have to take my word for it when I say it was on-target and pulled no punches.

Like many sportswriters and baseball fans, he's disgusted at the way that Nutting, chairman and majority stockholder of the Pittsburgh Pirates, is running (or is that ruining?) the team.

They're disappointed that the team didn't draft star prospect Matt Wieters because he would have cost too much to sign. They accuse Nutting of putting a cheap product on the field at the expense of quality.

If Nutting is running the Pirates to make them as cheap as possible, it should come as no surprise. "Cheapness" has been a virtue of his family newspaper chain for decades.

Ogden Newspapers dominates West Virginia (according to one estimate, it sells nearly one in every four newspapers in the state) and southern Ohio, and it has properties in other parts of the country as well, including several in central Pennsylvania, like the Altoona Mirror.

I've seen probably 10 or 12 different Ogden newspapers on a semi-regular basis over the years. They're not the worst newspapers I've ever seen, and there are some real bright spots among them.

Unfortunately, however, many Ogden papers look slapped-together; instead of local news coverage, they're stuffed with cheaper syndicated features. Chris Stirewalt, a commentator for WBOY-TV, the NBC affiliate in Clarksburg, says the Ogden chain's key to success has been "lean newsrooms and aggressive ad sales" which has left many West Virginia towns with a newspaper that "reads like a Rotary Club bulletin and is staffed by those too busy to think."

I've been told candidly by ex-Ogden reporters that the line between the "news," "editorials," and "advertising" is thin to non-existent. Last year, to cite one notorious example, the newspapers "sponsored" a visit by President Bush to Wheeling.

Certainly I've seen a lot of "stories" in Ogden papers that seemed to boost particular local businesses by name. I don't know for sure, but I suspect those stories were a reward to the businesses for advertising in the papers.

It's one thing to print "advertorial" stories if you clearly label them as paid content, but it's a little bit distasteful when you don't disclose that to your readers.

There are some very talented, dedicated people working at Ogden Newspapers --- I've known some of them --- who turn out quality journalism. But unless they're very dedicated to the communities they cover, few people can afford to make a living on the penurious salaries Ogden pays reporters.

There's been little written in the big journalism "watchdog" magazines about Ogden's operating style, possibly because it's a privately held company that operates mainly in very small towns, out of the view of the news media "experts" in New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

But the company's holdings also include larger markets like Wheeling, where Ogden owns both the morning and evening papers; and Fort Wayne, Ind., where they bought the afternoon News-Sentinel. I've never been to Fort Wayne, but I've been to Wheeling, and the Ogden papers there (the News-Register and the Intelligencer) don't look like the products of a media market large enough to be rated by both Arbitron and Nielsen. They certainly don't look like the flagships of a big media conglomerate.

I give Ogden a lot of credit for keeping two newspapers operating in places like Wheeling, Parkersburg and Fort Wayne. Not many publishers are willing to do that. In many Appalachian towns, Ogden's resources have probably kept alive papers that might otherwise have failed under independent ownership.

On the other hand, Ogden's dominance in West Virginia has arguably kept out potential competitors. And although the Mountaineer State could use some quality, hard-hitting journalism, that's not likely to happen under Ogden's penny-pinching ways.

Bemoan the woeful Pirates all you want --- they stink out loud. While I've been a Pirates fan since grade school, like Bob Braughler, I don't intend to spend a dime on them until they try --- try --- to become competitive. (And don't tell me about "small-market teams" when Cleveland and Milwaukee are leading their divisions.)

But the Nutting family's supposed stinginess with the Pirates is just part of a pattern that hundreds of writers and editors in Ohio and West Virginia have seen before. And while I'd like to see the Pirates winning, I suspect people in places like Wheeling would be more interested in seeing better quality news coverage.

. . .

(P.S.: I guess you can add to the long list of newspapers where I'm persona non grata.)