Pittsburgh Publisher Scaife Gives $1M to Tsunami Relief Efforts

By: (AP) The billionaire owner of a newspaper chain and his wife have donated $1 million to Catholic Relief Services for the organization's tsunami rescue and rehabilitation effort, the charity said.

Richard M. Scaife and his wife, Ritchie, made the donation yesterday and were moved to do so because of the scenes of devastation in southern Asia following the tsunami on Dec. 26, Richard Scaife said.

"It is absolutely heartbreaking to see hundreds of thousands of people who have nothing left, and to know that more than 150,000 have been killed and tens of thousands more may still die," he said. "This is just a drop in the bucket for what will be needed to recover from this tragedy."

Richard Scaife is the chairman of Westminster Holdings Inc. and the head of the Tribune-Review Publishing Co., which publishes the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and the Tribune-Review of Greensburg, among other western Pennsylvania newspapers.

Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services has raised more than $26 million since it made an emergency appeal to donors, said spokeswoman Caroline Brennan. The Scaifes' donation is the largest the organization has received since it started to raise money for tsunami relief and rehabilitation efforts, Brennan said.