Business reporting, then and now

It was back in 1990 that I became a business reporter for The Herald-Dispatch. I had covered Ohio for the paper from 1979 to mid-1989, after which I was brought against my will to Huntington to cover City Hall. Except for one misspent year back on the City Hall beat — again against my will — I covered economic news for The Herald-Dispatch up until I took over the editorial page in late 2004.

Those 13 years covering business were pretty good. But they saw changes in Huntington. The person covering business now has a different environment to work with, and it’s not a better one.

Back in 1990, Huntington had its own company whose stock was traded on the New York Stock Exchange. That was Ashland Coal, which later merged with Arch Mineral Corp. The new Arch Coal put its headquarters in St. Louis.

We had the Ashland Oil Inc. headquarters. Ashland Oil was a big player in the community. But when beancounters took over from the petroleum engineers, management decided the company was too cool for the Tri-State, so it left for a few floors in a Covington, Ky., high-rise.

We had some West Virginia-based banking companies such as Key Centurion. Key Centurion is long gone. It was acquired by Banc One, which itself was bought out by Chase.

In losing the headquarters to those companies, we lost a class of talented people who gave their time and money to the community.

There are some folks in town who are probably glad those rich middle class people are gone. I’ve never understood the attitude of some people in Huntington that people who wear white shirts and ties are inherently evil. The idea that anyone would want to make a profit is repugnant. But I hear that line of thinking a lot.

Huntington won’t come back until it can be the home of some prosperous, visible businesses. There are some successful homegrown companies here, but they don’t want to attract the attention of union organizers or insurance salesmen.

We need more people in the managerial classes. We are weighted too heavily on unskilled and low-skilled labor. We need a better diversity in our work force.

KineticPark was supposed to be home to regional offices of major corporations. None are out there. It would be good to know why and what we can do about it.

Actually, we do know why, but we don't like to talk about it. This region -- for whatever reason -- lacks the entrepreneurial spirit it once had. Disagree? Tell me one significant, growing business other than retail or medical-related that has started up here in the past 10 years. And it is not attractive to outside companies looking for places to put headquarters offices. Even with Yeager Airport less than an hour away, air service in and out of here is not the best.

So we plod along.