Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, also known as "the Trib", is the second-largest daily newspaper serving the Greater Pittsburgh metropolitan area of Western Pennsylvania. It transitioned to an all-digital format on December 1, 2016, but remains the second-largest daily in Pennsylvania, with nearly one million unique page views monthly.[2] Founded on August 22, 1811, as the Greensburg Gazette and consolidated with several papers into the Greensburg Tribune-Review in 1889,[3][4] the paper circulated only in the eastern suburban counties of Westmoreland and parts of Indiana and Fayette until May 1992, when it began serving all of the Greater Pittsburgh metropolitan area after a strike at the two Pittsburgh dailies, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Pittsburgh Press, deprived the city of a newspaper for several months.
Type
Daily newspaper
Tribune-Review Publishing Company
1811 (In 1992 became metro-wide)
503 Martindale St.
3rd Floor
Pittsburgh, PA 15212
United States
187,875 Daily
202,181 Sunday (as of 2011)[1]
The Tribune-Review Publishing Company was owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, an heir to the Mellon banking, oil, and aluminum fortune, until his death in July 2014. Scaife was a major funder of conservative organizations, including the Arkansas Project. Accordingly, the Tribune-Review has maintained a conservative editorial stance, contrasting with the then-more liberal Post-Gazette before that paper's own editorial shift in 2018.[5][6] In addition to its flagship paper, the company publishes 17 weekly community newspapers,[7] the Pittsburgh Pennysaver, TribLive.com, and TribTotalMedia.com.
Investigations, national attention[edit]
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.[33]
The reporters, and a CBS camera operator, were charged with trespassing at a Neville Island plant during their investigation.[34] They were later acquitted when the judge accepted that the story had been in the public interest.[35]
In 2007, Prine's further investigation into the subject was featured in the PBS documentary series Exposé: America's Investigative Reports, in a two-part episode titled "Think Like A Terrorist."
One Tribune-Review flap went national when Colin McNickle, then 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 negative articles in the Tribune-Review's opinion pages. After the speech, there was a dispute between McNickle and Heinz Kerry over her use of the term "un-American activity."
Circulation[edit]
The daily Tribune-Review is published in three geographic editions: Pittsburgh, Westmoreland, and Valley News Dispatch.
The Tribune-Review claimed to show the highest gains in readership over the past five years of any newspaper in America's top 48 markets, which were dominated by sinking readership. The growth can be attributed to purchases of other newspapers, which were then reclassified as editions of the Tribune-Review. This idea was proposed to Scaife and Ralph Martin by David Horchak, the Circulation Director of The Valley News Dispatch. Taking advantage of ABC rules that allowed declaring newspapers to include all circulation of a newspaper to be declared editions of a main newspaper. This did not keep David Horchak on when the Tribune-Review decided to have just two circulation directors after personnel cuts.
According to surveys by International Demographics Inc., an independent media research firm in Houston, the number of Tribune-Review readers jumped 17.8 percent from 2007 to 2012.[36]
As part of the Trib Total Media conglomerate, the Tribune-Review has a news exchange partnership with WPXI, Pittsburgh's NBC affiliate. Until 2013, it was a sister publication to Pittsburgh's second-largest news radio station, KQV. Trib Total Media is the Official Newspaper of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Pittsburgh Penguins (the latter of which Scaife was a co-founder in 1967). It has strong partnerships with many nonprofit and community businesses and organizations throughout Western Pennsylvania.