Don Sarvey, Author at Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine

Death of the Daily News by Andrew Conte

Posted by Don Sarvey on Dec 16, 2022 in | Comments Off Death of the Daily News How Citizen Gatekeepers Can Save Local Journalism by Andrew Conte University of Pittsburgh Press, 176 pp., hardcover $26.00 The internet and digitization have changed the economics of delivering news. Print newspapers in particular, with some exceptions, are struggling to survive. Many already haven’t. Small towns and rural areas have been especially hard hit. Communities...
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Agnes: Pennsylvania’s Most Devastating Natural Disaster

Posted by Don Sarvey on May 13, 2022 in | Comments Off The late Paul Beers, the longtime columnist for the Harrisburg Patriot-News, once wrote that some Pennsylvanians are “amazingly complacent” about the threat of flooding despite living in a state that is quite vulnerable. Back in the day, around the midpoint of the 20th century, when old-timers in Pennsylvania spoke of “the big one,” they were referring to the 1936 flood — floods plural,...
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Ahead of Her Time: Pennsylvania Aviator Helen Richey

Posted by Don Sarvey on Oct 9, 2020 in | Comments Off It was the era of plucky barnstorming aviators. Charles Lindbergh had flown across the Atlantic in 1927 and in the ensuing decade the romance of the skies was in full flower. Flight records were being chased and broken with regularity. Faster, sleeker airplanes were being introduced. Air races with cash prizes were in vogue across the country. The public, fed by an eager press, was fascinated....
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Paying It Forward: The Legacy of Genevieve Blatt

Posted by Don Sarvey on Dec 31, 2019 in | Comments Off When she was a judge on Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court, Genevieve Blatt (1913-96) was known to instruct her law clerks that she didn’t want to see them typing. “She was very insistent that we had other people who could perform that task for us,” said Mary K. Kisthardt, a former law clerk for the judge who is now a professor of law at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law....
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Pennsylvania Stories – Well Told by William Ecenbarger

Posted by Don Sarvey on Aug 22, 2017 in | 0 comments Pennsylvania Stories – Well Told by William Ecenbarger Temple University Press, 244 pp., cloth $25 Ecenbarger has earned well-deserved praise and admiration for his work as a newspaper staff writer and freelance writer over the course of a Pennsylvania-based career of nearly 50 years. His previous book, Kids for Cash (New Press, 2012), detailed the corrupt juvenile justice system in northeastern...
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Tough and Determined: Pioneering Newspaper Editor Rebecca F. Gross

Posted by Don Sarvey on Jun 13, 2017 in | Comments Off On a night in the winter of 1947-48, Rebecca F. Gross, 42 years old and the editor of a 10,000-circulation daily newspaper in the small town of Lock Haven, Clinton County, was scheduled to have dinner with two luminaries of the time: Robert Capa, the internationally famous war photographer, and John Steinbeck, the novelist and future Nobel laureate. The dinner was an event set up for members of...
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Two Decades of PA Books: An Interview with Brian Lockman

Posted by Don Sarvey on Apr 19, 2016 in | Comments Off PA Books is a weekly television series that has been running on the Pennsylvania Cable Network (PCN) for 20 years. Brian Lockman, president and CEO of the Harrisburg-based network, has hosted the program from the beginning, interviewing authors of books related to Pennsylvania. He does 35 to 40 new interviews a year, and PCN reruns past programs frequently. A recent survey indicated that PA...
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