[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 18]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 26005]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



            100TH ANNIVERSARY OF BLOCK COMMUNICATIONS, INC.

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. MARCY KAPTUR

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, November 3, 2000

  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 100th 
anniversary of Block Communications, Inc. The Block family and its 
extended mass communications family celebrates this significant 
milestone on November 2, 2000.
  Born in Lithuania, moving to Germany for a time until his family 
immigrated to the United States, Paul Bloch began working in the 
newspaper business at age eleven when the Elmira Telegram in Elmira, 
New York hired him. Through age twenty, Paul Bloch--who by now had 
Americanized the family name to Block--worked in every department of 
the Elmira Telegram learning the trade and becoming especially adept at 
sales. Then, in 1895 and with the encouragement of his employer, Paul 
Block made the move to New York City where he found employment selling 
advertising for newspapers across the country as a national 
representative for the A. Frank Richardson Company.
  In 1900, Paul Block decided to venture out on his own, and by 1910 
Paul Block and Associates was among the major national newspaper 
advertising representative firms. Further branching out, Paul Block 
organized a group of investors in order to purchase the Newark Star 
Eagle in 1916. Purchases of several other newspapers soon followed, and 
in ten years Paul Block owned the Detroit Journal, The Toledo Blade, 
and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Paul Block struggled to keep his 
business alive through the decade of the Depression, and the company 
was again thriving upon his death in 1941.
  The company continued in the Block family and eventually became known 
as Blade Communications Inc. Through the latter half of the century the 
company diversified to include cable and broadcast television, 
telecommunications, and Internet opportunities. Blade Communications 
Inc. holds fourteen communication companies today. To mark the 
company's centennial, the company's name was changed once more to Block 
Communications Inc.
  The Block family remains a strong fixture in Toledo, Ohio and 
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where it still owns The Blade and the Post-
Gazette. The Block imprimatur is evident in many of these cities' major 
projects and institutions, and the family remains an integral component 
of both communities. I join with many others as we salute one hundred 
years of Block family tradition in communications and community, and 
look forward to the next one hundred years.

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