The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a newspaper almost as old as the United States, is ceasing publication, striking yet another blow against our free press and democracy.
The announcement that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a newspaper founded shortly after the Revolutionary War, shocked many of my old colleagues.
“Dude, the Post-Gazette shut down!” a senior editor at NPR wrote to me. We came up together in Washington journalism during the early aughts, so when we communicate, it’s as if we’re still in our 20s.
It was my misfortune to inform him that I was not shocked by the decision to shutter a Pittsburgh institution that held the powerful accountable and exposed the corrupt for more than two centuries.
The owners of the Post-Gazette, the Toledo-based Block Communications, have been drowning the Post-Gazette in the proverbial bath of incompetence and greed for years.
Over the last few years, ownership engaged in a protracted war with its employees over salaries and benefits, resulting in a years-long strike that was seemingly resolved.
You see, back in November, an appeals court ruled against the Blocks, ordering the owners of the Post-Gazette to restore terms of a labor agreement that had expired in 2017.
Block Communication then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the lower court’s decision, which eventually ruled in favor of unions representing Post-Gazette workers who had been fighting for fair wages and decent healthcare for years.
Butt-hurt by the Supreme Court’s decision, Block Communication then announced it was pulling the plug on a storied journalistic institution, citing hundreds of millions of dollars in supposed losses.
Word of the Block’s decision to kill the paper known locally as the “PG” was met with condemnation.
Andrew Goldstein, the president of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, was chief among them.
“Instead of simply following the law, the owners chose to punish local journalists and the city of Pittsburgh,” he said, as reported by the paper condemned to death.
“Post-Gazette journalists have done award winning work for decades and we’re going to pursue all options to make sure that Pittsburgh continues to have the caliber of journalism it deserves.”
Among the Post-Gazette’s recent accomplishments was a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of a 2018 synagogue massacre that left 11 people dead.
Alas, the accomplishments and their civic duty to the community that enriched them mattered little to the Blocks.
Block Communications is run by twins, Allan and John, with the latter by all accounts being the Fredo Corleone of the clan.
John Block illustrated his unmasked contempt for Post-Gazette workers during a widely publicized2019 incident in which he reportedly drunkenly berated the newsroom late one night while in the company of his then minor-aged daughter.
At the time, Allan Block sought to spin his brother’s tirade as merely “frustration over financial and other challenges in the newspaper industry.”
The Post-Gazette has been in a death spiral ever since. And with the decision to cease publication of the paper on May 3, yet another beacon of press freedom will be extinguished.
Pittsburgh and the Western Pennsylvania community the Post-Gazette serves deserves better than the Blocks, who in recent years also steered the paper’s editorial page into becoming an apologist mouthpiece and cheerleader for Trump and the MAGA movement.
Fortunately, there are other outlets in Pittsburgh holding the powers that be accountable, including the local public radio affiliate and Public Source, a non-profit newsroom.
Let’s hope they can fill the void left by the demise of the Post-Gazette.
RIP: PG
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