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Media Scope
Anchors Away at LunchIf you want to hear platitudes, don't invite Tom Holden to lunch."There is a dark side to all of us, and I think we need to own up to that from time to time," WKBN-TV's veteran anchorman said June 30 at a luncheon hosted by the Youngstown Ad Club. Holden, who's been in the news business 40 years and telling like it is for almost as long teaching broadcast journalism at Youngstown State University, was answering the common complaint that local TV news is too negative, too gory and too sensational. "Sometimes we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't," he said. "In our business, sex, celebrity and crime sells -- and that's the bottom line."The Ad Club event brought together the main anchors of Youngstown's four commercial television stations for a panel discussion before 160 advertising and media professionals -- the club's largest turnout since it became an affiliate of the Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber.Too gracious to intentionally upstage his colleagues, Holden still stole the show. "I'm a local yokel. I love this town, I love its people and its work ethic," he said. "Things haven't changed much for me over the years except I started making more money."For sure, some bigger-money job offers were dangled his way from out-of-town stations, but Holden said never wanted to leave Youngstown.Asked by the discussion moderator, Helen Paes of The Vindicator, to name the one story that had "a dramatic impact on the Mahoning Valley," Holden didn't blink. "That's so simple, it's obvious. The steel mills going down changed the identity of the Mahoning Valley and we're still searching for it 30 years later."Gina Marinelli, Holden's co-anchor at 11 p.m.on WKBN and anchor of the 10 p.m. news on sister station WYFX, said in the aftermath of the mill closings and the mob and public corruption trials, the continuing growth of Youngstown State University is countering the negative image of the Mahoning Valley. "We get slammed a lot," Marinelli observed, "but if you look at these negatives, they're making us stronger."WFMJ's Bob Black, once Holden's co-worker and now his 6 and 11 p.m. competitor, underscored the importance of General Motors Lordstown. Flanked by his new co-anchor, Autumn Ziemba (who flashed her youthful exuberance by exclaiming that investigative reporting has increased in the last 10 years), Black took the audience back eight years. "I don't remember it being widely reported in 1996 and 1997 just how close we were to losing the General Motors plant in Lordstown," he said. "There was no question about it. Those jobs were going."Black related how Herman Maass, then manager of GM's assembly plant, summoned Al Alli, then shop steward of United Auto Workers Local 1112, into his office and asked him to put aside two decades of bad labor/management relations to save the plant. "If one thing perhaps reversed the fortunes of the Valley, it's what happened that day in Herman Maass's office," he said.WYTV's Vince Bevacqua, who came to the Mahoning Valley from a television station in New Hampshire, said although the bribery conviction of former U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. spotlighted the Mahoning Valley in a negative way, "It also sent a message that no one is above the law, no matter how popular or personable."Angee Shaker, Bevacqua's co-anchor, interjected that Traficant also did "a lot of good for the community and hopefully his dream of a convocation center will turn out well." Shaker recalled her recent series of reports from Hildago, Texas, where the developers of Youngstown's convocation center built a similar arena. "It's absolutely spectacular," she said, "and that can happen here."Do you have a question or comment about this column? To send a message to Andrea Wood, click here."