Technology Changes Education, Career Choices

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – When Mahoning County Career and Technical Center Superintendent John Zehentbauer started as an instructor at the center in 1991, the equipment students used in classes lasted and remained industry-relevant for 20 years.
Now technology changes mean a much shorter useful life for equipment. And that’s just one of the changes across both K-12 and higher education over the last 40 years. Open enrollment and student debt weren’t major considerations then either. But they’re significant factors today.
Mahoning and Shenango Valley educators report shifts in focus, technological advances and new opportunities over the past four decades. READ MORE

Business Journal Classic: The Pentagon Payroll Center That Wasn’t

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The effort to secure a federal Defense Finance and Accounting Service center was one of the first large-scale efforts by Mahoning Valley leaders to achieve a regional goal.
The objective was to land one of up to seven payroll processing centers, each of which was expected to create 4,000 to 7,000 jobs, according to a story in the MidApril 1992 Business Journal.
Then-U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. asked the Western Reserve Port Authority, the new two-county entity formed to assume operation of what was then Youngstown Municipal Airport, to serve as the bidding agent for the $100 million project. READ MORE

A Media Industry Not Seen 40 Years Ago

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – In the four decades since The Business Journal published its first edition, the transformation of the local media landscape – driven by advances in technology and changes in society – has been seismic.
The Business Journal itself has adapted to many of those changes, from the emergence of online publishing to video stories and the growing role of social media.
The most acute change in the Mahoning Valley was the demise of its largest daily newspaper five years ago. While the closing of the original Vindicator was part of a nationwide trend, change has hardly been limited to that singular event. READ MORE

Business Journal Classic: Steel Museum Preserves Industrial Heritage

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor – commonly known as the Steel Museum – has been a presence in the Mahoning Valley for more than 30 years.
Its creation came in fits and starts, suffering from lack of capitalization over the years (not unlike the industry it memorializes), but ultimately has endured as a fixture of downtown Youngstown’s landscape and as a repository for a major portion of the region’s history.   
“A museum preserving the industrial traditions of the Mahoning Valley is an idea apparently destined to become reality,” the lead paragraph in a March 1985 story in the Youngstown Business Journal accurately prophesied. READ MORE

Family Keeps on Truckin’ at TSI Western Star

NORTH JACKSON, Ohio – A North Jackson-based family trucking company rolls into its 40th year in business this year.
Truck Specialists Inc., also known as TSI Western Star, helps local drivers keep their trucks on the road.
“When we first started selling trucks, it was mostly owner-operators, over the road operators and sleeper trucks. We evolved over the years to concentrate on smaller businesses who had multiple trucks and further focused on doing the vocational side of the market,” says Clint Moore, TSI president. READ MORE

Business Journal Classic: From Solidly Blue to Turning Red

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The election of Barack Obama as the nation’s 44th president brought federal resources to the Mahoning Valley that were believed to be key to Youngstown landing a $1 billion economic development project.
Throughout his eight years in office, Obama’s attention to the Mahoning Valley contradicted complaints dating back decades that local voters handed their support to Democrats without getting meaningful dollars in return.
But by the end of Obama’s administration, all his attention proved to be for naught. The ascendency of Donald Trump was transforming the once-solidly Democratic region. READ MORE

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