YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The masthead of The Business Journal’s mid-April edition includes a slight change.
Andrea Wood, a pioneering journalist whose work in the Mahoning Valley has touched six decades, has earned the title of Publisher Emeritus of The Business Journal, a publication she helped to establish in 1984.
After more than 50 years in broadcast and print journalism, Wood decided that it was time to retire from her daily activities at the newspaper – effective April 1. She leaves a legacy that few in the community could match, business leaders and colleagues say.
“Journalism is a blast,” Wood says, as she reflects on her career. Leaving the business entirely behind will be difficult, she acknowledges, but she also understands when it’s time to step back after decades of hard work. “It was time to go, and the next generation is in place.
The Business Journal, and the Mahoning Valley’s business community, have changed dramatically since the newspaper was launched during a turbulent economic period for the region.
At the time, local businesses had to wrestle with the overall negative perception of the community in the wake of the steel shutdowns, its legacy of organized crime, and the population exodus to markets that beckoned with more lucrative opportunities. It seemed risky at best to launch a business publication in the midst of such economic turmoil.
But it worked.
“As we invested our time and effort to build up the business community, that was reciprocated by our business community, by all the locally owned companies that supported us with their advertising,” Wood says. “A lot of people advertised with us just because they believed in us, and they wanted us to change the narrative.”
Which was no easy task during the mid-1980s, she acknowledges. This was a period she describes as the “age of the charlatans,” referring to major projects and companies that either made big promises they couldn’t deliver, or those larger corporate entities that moved into the region, acquired local companies, gutted them, and shut them down.
“The whole idea behind The Business Journal was that no one was telling good business news,” Wood recalls. “The idea was to tell positive business news happening in the Mahoning Valley.”
Early investors in The Business Journal shared that vision and stepped up, signaling there was no better opportunity to tell the entire story of the Mahoning Valley.
And, as the newspaper grew and adapted, so too did the local business culture.
EARLY YEARS
As a broadcast journalist, reporter, and publisher in the Mahoning Valley, Wood has seen it all. There were the major stories: the decline of Big Steel, the retrenchment in the automobile industry, the dismantling of organized crime, high-stakes corporate fraud, and the rise and fall of prominent politicians.
A native of Pittsburgh, Wood first considered a career in law. But in her senior year at Penn State University, at her mother’s suggestion, she enrolled in broadcasting courses, just as more women were entering the industry.
Upon graduation, she applied to every television station in Pennsylvania – none of which responded. Eventually she was hired as the secretary for the general sales manager at KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh. “I learned a lot about sales there,” she recalls.
It was at KDKA that a newscast director helped Wood develop her skills as a broadcaster. “At lunchtime, I would go downstairs and read in front of the camera,” using a script she had written the night before. “They let me practice being an anchorwoman.”
Then, in 1974, Wood heard that a station in Youngstown – WYTV – was interested in hiring a female reporter. “I took a demo test in front of the camera, and I was hired,” she says.
Her decision to move into journalism coincided with a renewed interest in the profession, influenced by the work of reporters such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who exposed early connections between a “third rate burglary” at the Watergate complex and Richard Nixon’s White House. “I was part of that generation,” she says. “It was really cool.”
Wood then left the area for broadcasting jobs in South Bend, Ind., and Pittsburgh before returning to Youngstown in 1979 for her second stint at WYTV, just as mob factions renewed their war against each other and the economy faltered. “The demise of the steel mills had taken its toll,” she says.
By the mid-1980s, Wood says she became bored with anchoring the news and jumped at the opportunity to combine her writing and reporting skills to create a product that filled a void in the Mahoning Valley.
BUSINESS LEADERS
With the support of local businessmen such as Clarence Smith and Arnold Collins; Wood’s father, Harold; and later, longtime newspaperman Clingan Jackson, The Business Journal found its footing.
As a counterpoint to much of the negative news – the collapse of Avanti and Phar-Mor, for example – The Business Journal published positive stories about the small-business community. As the publication grew, so too did its scope, covering Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties in Ohio and Lawrence and Mercer counties in western Pennsylvania.
“Where we found good news in the early days was with small businesses that were adding one, two, three or four jobs – and were committed to the community,” she says. Moreover, the area was entering a period of good government, particularly in the city of Youngstown. During the administration of Mayor Pat Ungaro, for example, from the late 1980s and to the mid-1990s, industrial parks were created on former steel mill property, and a buy-down program to help small businesses weather high interest rates was adopted.
About the same time, effective business leadership emerged and mapped the way forward, Wood says. She cites the movement to merge the Youngstown, Warren and Niles chambers of commerce into the Regional Chamber, the drive to create the Western Reserve Port Authority and, most recently, the creation of Lake to River Economic Development.
“Our strength is in our regional business community,” she says. “It always will be.”
Retired businessman John Moliterno, who also served as president of the Better Business Bureau, the Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber, and as executive director of the Port Authority, says Wood was ahead of her time, leading the charge toward a more regional approach to economic development.
“We go back a long way,” Moliterno says. “She was tough. She always asked the hard questions.”
That’s because Wood cares so deeply about her profession and her dedication to good journalism, he says. “I’m not sure if most journalists care as deeply as she does.”
Moliterno says that under her stewardship, The Business Journal has become the voice of trusted news in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys. “You could count on The Business Journal for giving you the straight news,” he says. Moreover, the publication has adapted successfully to challenging and changing times in the newspaper industry.
“She’s one of my favorite people,” Moliterno remarks.
Wood says approaching business attraction and economic development from a regional perspective was the first editorial position the newspaper pursued. “We were constantly preaching consolidation, joint efforts, to work together as a unit,” she says.
Others who have worked with Wood over the years share a profound respect for her accomplishments.
“It’s been a long journey with Andrea for over 50 years,” says Tony Mancino, a news photographer and cameraman who first worked with Wood in 1974. “When she came to Channel 33, I was assigned to her and we’ve been fighting ever since,” he says with a laugh. “I have the utmost respect for her.”
Mancino made the transition to The Business Journal as a freelance photographer after he left television. “She took an idea and turned it into reality,” he says. “So, great going, Andrea.”
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
Two years ago, Wood sold the controlling interest in the Youngstown Publishing Co. to Sapientia Ventures, a venture capital group based in Warren comprised of Charles George, Wiley Runnestrand and Michael Martof.
Wood says she wanted to ensure that the company was in the hands of local people who would carry the mission forward during this challenging period for journalists and journalism.
“When I sold the paper to Sapientia Ventures, I truly believe that it was blessed, because they came from the community,” she says. “They bought it for the same reason we work so hard at this newspaper: to improve business and industry and quality of life in this community. The original investors were the same.”
Sapientia’s George says he was often reticent in the past to speak with Business Journal reporters about his business ventures. “There was a high level of respect but also a high level of fear,” he laughs.
Nevertheless, George says he’s always admired Wood and her high level of professionalism. The growth potential in the region is enormous, he continues, and The Business Journal is positioned to tell the future stories of business in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys.
“There needs to be a positive voice other than social media,” he says. “Businesses look at this and we need to continue promoting visionaries. That’s what Andrea always did.”
Wood says none of it would have been possible without The Business Journal staff, past and present, who have helped to build the company into the multimedia firm it is today, producing print, video and online content for readers across the country. She credits the leap into the digital age to retired managing editor Monnie Ryan, who pushed and pushed to establish the news organization’s first website. “Now our stories can go all over the world,” she says.
She also credits her husband, retired copy editor and veteran reporter Dennis LaRue, for helping to shape the voice of the newspaper over the last 30 years.
Wood is confident that residents of this community will always demand the type of news coverage The Business Journal has produced since it was founded in August 1984 – a time when the region was devastated by job loss and lack of hope.
Today, the economy is diversified and there is more regional cooperation than ever as efforts to reimagine the region are well in gear. It’s a notion that few would have believed in 1984 and at the center of it all was Wood and The Business Journal.
“I’d like to think that we changed the narrative,” Wood says. “And I think we did.”
Pictured at top: Andrea Wood in her office, next to a poster of Abraham Lincoln.