Shoud Steelers Minority Owner Thomas Tull Buy the Pittsburgh Post Gazette?

The news that the Graham family was selling the Washington Post to Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has sent shock waves through the media landscape.

• Now how, pray tell, would this subject find itself discussed on a Pittsburgh Steelers blog? 

Truthfully, there is no direct link.

But the roots of any good story always lie in the back story, and that brings us to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Steelers minority owner Thomas Tull.

These are hard times for newspapers, as readers and, more importantly, advertisers gravitate to the internet.

• And there is a cruel irony to this process. 

It is a fair bet to say that more eyes probably land on most major dailies than would have been dreamed of a generation ago. The internet has reduced all of the logistical distribution nightmares and corresponding costs to next to zero.

• Yet for all of that, newspapers continue to cut costs, cut staffs yet still struggle to break even, let alone make a profit.

Elliot King, chairman of the Loyola University Maryland’s Writing and Media department and author of Free For All, a 2010 book on the newspaper industry’s struggles in the digital age, contends that one of the culprits in newspaper’s demise is corporate ownership.

Conversely, King contends, family owned papers have fared better.

• But the Washington Post, while publicly traded, remained family controlled.

Yet the Graham family, which has owned and run the paper for four generations, ultimately determined that the only way for the paper to thrive was to take it private, which meant selling it off.

This was true in spite of the fact that the Washington Post is an internationally recognized brand name, serving well-heeled, well educated market with a website that is one of the top news destinations.

• Nonetheless, the Graham family felt it had no choice.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Steel City’s flagship publication is also family owned. And in 2006 its owners publicly flirted with selling the paper due to increasing labor costs.

While the Steel Curtain Rising has no inside information on the Post-Gazette’s balance sheet, there is no way the paper can remain immune from the pressures of faced by the entire industry.

To be sure, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette faring better than others. Last year the paper reported a circulation increase. That’s right, the newspaper saw its circulation increase. Certainly the paper benefits for the large concentration of elderly in Western Pennsylvania, readers who prefer newsprint to iPads.

• But that benefit comes with a Catch-22.

As those readers move on to their heavenly reward, younger ones do not take their place.

It is more than plasuable that the Block family, which owns the Post-Gazette, could face the same decision forced upon the Grahams.

• But who to sell to?

Well, Pittsburgh has its share of wealthy, but the Rooney family’s 2008 restructuring of the Steelers ownership group also brought connections to young, wealthy, innovator in the form of Thomas Tull.

Thomas Tull might not be a house hold name, but if you’ve seen any of the Batman Dark Knight movies, then you can thank him.

Would Tull be interested? Who knows? Jeff Bezos reportedly had no overt interest in entering the newspaper business until two days ago.

Since buying into the Steelers, Tull has done his part to help promote the city.

Someday he could be called on to shore up one of its leading media institutions.

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In Memory of Rita McGinley, Part Owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers

Long time Pittsburgh Steelers minority owner Rita McGinley has passed away.

Rita McGinley was the daughter of Barney McGinley who bought out Bert Bell’s shares of the Steelers when Bell became NFL commissioner. She was related to the Rooney’s by marriage as her brother Jack McGinley was married to Art Rooney Sr.’s sister Marie.

McGinley Loyal to Her Community and Her Team

McGinley was a graduate of Carlow College (then known as Mount Mercy) where she earned a degree in biology, graduating in 1940. She went on to teach at Braddock High and Woodlawn Hills High.

Rita McGinley was not a silent partner in the Steelers. In her obituary on Steelers.com Art Rooney II went at great pains to say that she watched games at Three Rivers Stadium and Heinz Field for as long as she could, always attended shareholder meetings, and was a frequent presence at training camp.

Like her brother before her, Rita McGinley was fiercely loyal to both the Rooney’s and the Steelers.

During the Steelers ownership restructuring of 2008, it became known that shortly after the death of Art Rooney Sr. a representative of an investor approached Jack McGinley asking him if he would be interested in parting with his shares of the Steelers. (Sorry, no link available.)

McGinley promptly told the said representative that his patron could keep his money and while he held on to his share of the Steelers. After McGinley passed away in 2006, a similar offer was made to his heirs.

That suitor was none other that Stanley Druckenmiller, who of course emerged in 2008 with his attempt to buy out the shares of Tim, John, Pat, and Art Rooney, Jr. after Roger Goodell ordered the Rooney family to divest itself of either the Steelers or its horse racing interests.

• For a time there it seemed like the Rooneys could lose control of the Steelers.

But Rita McGinley made it clear in an interview that she was not parting with her shares of the team, no matter what price was offered to her.

True to her word, she retained her 10% stake in the Steelers when the ownership restructuring was complete. It is unknown who now inherits those shares.

Friend to Carlow College and St. Vincents

While part ownership of the Pittsburgh Steelers may have earned Rita McGinley notoriety, “The best description of her is that she was a teacher and philanthropist who happened to have an interest in a football team,” explained her Jack McGinley in an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

McGinley was generous with her wealth, donating 5 million dollars to Carlow College where she founded the Rita McGinley Center for Student Success. Mary Hines, President of Carlow College, told the Tribune-Review that was a very dear friend of the university who truly exemplified what a Carlow alum is and what they value.”

• She also endowed a chair at St. Vincent’s College in Latrobe to help perpetuate the legacy of Pittsburgh icon Fred Rodgers.

St. Vincent’s College is well known to Steelers Nation for the obvious reason, but Carlow College might very well be new for many. Situated on “17 glorious acres  in the Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood, Carlow is a small, traditionally female, Catholic liberal arts school sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy.

In the generations when female higher education was the exception and not the rule, Carlow severed as a gateway to a college degree to thousands of young women in Western Pennsylvania, including my aunt and my mother.

Thanks, in part, to Rita McGinley’s generosity that door will remain open, and perhaps that will be her most enduring legacy.

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