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Finder: Pirate Report's demise not easy for Novotney

Finder: Pirate Report's demise not easy for Novotney

Bidding farewell is never easy.

Parting with a baby you birthed seven years earlier is never emotionless. No wonder it took Steve Novotney day after arduous day to compose his final column, wrap up his final issue of the Pirate Report and -- kiss it goodbye.

  
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One-hundred thirty-one issues later, the book is closed. One last edition is headed to the printers, then to subscribers and stores. And for Novotney, turning the final page meant being unsure if he can bring himself to attend Piratefest this weekend.

"I've always been a fan of the Pirates. I always will be," said this native West Virginian.

"But I'm sad."

It all began with this notion brought to fruition by G. Ogden Nutting, a Pirates part-owner who also happened to be th e pa triarch of a century-old family newspaper empire based in Wheeling. He envisioned a publication to trumpet the new-look team. A media outlet to cover the entire organization, major-league club to mino rs to Caribbean academies. A standard bearer to plop into the hands of fans and drop into newspaper boxes around the ballpark and line store shelves around Western Pennsylvania.

So Novotney put West Virginia in his rear-view mirror and a splashy, four-color tabloid on the printing presses.

With two full-time employees and 19 issues per year (biweekly in season and monthly in the off-season) and hundred of folks to cover and thousands of readers to reach, the job can grow sort of daunting. Marketing. Advertising, Taking your own photographs. Delivering the pages to the Warren, Ohio, printer. Oh, yeah, and following 162 games, nine innings at a time, pitch after pitch.

"I've told everybody that for the past seven years I've been lucky to put my two passions together: baseball and journalism. I was very lucky. No matter what."

"Even though it was every out, every inning, every day, I'm going to miss it all."

Ogden Newspapers Inc. wrote the checks to Novotney and reporter John "Bruiser" D'Abruzzo and the freelance correspondents, it oversaw the publication, the better to keep Pirate Report journalistically separate from the Pirates that issued the employees office space, PNC Park badges and keys to the kingdom. In good times, the publication had more than 10,000 subscribers -- mostly season ticketholders -- and single-copy sales. In bad times ... well, suffice it to say Novotney wrote almost as many e-mail replies to angry fans as he did words for his newspaper.

Apparently, the market for the team and its publication has dipped. Ogden officials decided to cease publication. It didn't happen with the late Pittsburgh Press, but at least Novotney and Co. got one last goodbye edition with Pirate Report.

Daily newspapers, major-market TV and radio outlets and the Internet all conspired to make it a crowded competition. Sure, it didn't help Pirate Report to have a shelf life of two weeks in season, it didn't help to have deadlines that meant missing out the David Littlefield hiring as general manager in July 2001, it didn't help to be a couple of games stale between every publication and delivery. "In baseball and hockey, the schedules don't cooperate," said Steelers Digest editor Bob Labriola. "In football, you have a more orderly element."

Pirate Report tried to overcome such obstacles with honesty and integrity -- this wasn't exactly a house organ. You have to wonder how McClatchy, from a media family, reacted to covers extolling the firing of then-GM Cam Bonifay, the pressures on catcher Jason Kendall, the confessions of the managing general partner himself ("I admit I made mistakes," that headline blared). Added Labriola, likewise publishing with an independent voice: "You can't blow sunshine where there isn't any. People won't spend the money if they feel they're getting pablum."

Novotney attempted to position the paper and himself in the public eye, talking WEAE-AM (1250) into a "Talkin' Bucco Baseball" show starting in late 1998 and then a "Jack Wilson Show" starting last year. Those, too, are gone.

Let's hope that Novotney and possibly even D'Abruzzo will be retained as employees with Ogden Newspapers and its three-dozen-plus publications. Novotney already has st arted a new radio show on Clear Channel's WWVA-AM in Wheeling. He expects to continue writing baseball books, considering that "Winning Ways: Tales of Past Pittsburgh Pirates" is scheduled to m ake its debut opening day.

On his way out of PNC Park, he offers no public parting shots.

Of McClatchy, he said: "The man wants to win more than anybody else in that building. Running the team as a business isn't a bad thing this day and age. You have to. But he wants to win."

Of the rest of the gang, he prays for a winner, quoting a phrase he turns in his farewell column: "There are so many people in that front office that I want to see 'stride with pride.' When those people go out, not only do they hear it about the team on the field, they hear it about the ballpark, ticket prices, bottled-water controversies ..."

They heard about it, and Pirate Report wrote it.

It was a pretty decent run while it lasted, and you can't say that about the Pirates lately.

First Published: February 5, 2004, 5:00 a.m.

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