Can the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette be saved?
The owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette say they are shutting the paper down in May amid a labor dispute with union writers and editors.
On Wednesday, the owners of the paper, Block Communications, announced the plans to shut down. But will anyone step in to save it?
KDKA spoke with a former employee of the paper about the past and future of Pittsburgh journalism.
History of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Brian O'Neill came to Pittsburgh in the late 1980s as a columnist for The Pittsburgh Press, but he lost his job when a Teamster strike shut the paper down and led to its demise. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette survived and hired O'Neill, but now it's folding amidst another labor dispute.
"The writing's been on the wall for a long time," the former columnist said.
Since the late 1980s, newspapers like the Press and the Post-Gazette have been dying a slow death with loss of circulation and advertising revenue that's all but disappeared since the birth of the internet. The Post-Gazette said on Wednesday that it has lost $350 million in the past 20 years.
Like others, the Post-Gazette reduced staff and demanded give-backs from its reporters and editors. The Newspaper Guild sued and struck, and the courts have ruled that the paper illegally cut health care benefits. Rather than pay, the paper announced it would close instead.
"They were trying to break the union," O'Neill said. "I don't think there's any question about that."
But the dispute may have only been the final nail in the coffin. If not $350 million, the Post-Gazette has continued to lose enormous sums of money, and when the Block family couldn't staunch the bleeding, nobody was stepping up to buy it.
"It's death by a thousand cuts," O'Neill said. "Who knows what the last one that destroyed the PG was, but it was a long trend, decades long."
Possible saviors of the paper
Now, eyes turn to Pittsburgh's foundation community as possible saviors of the newspaper, as it's doubtful any private buyer will be interested. The foundations already support Public Source and other news operations, but replacing the Post-Gazette is a tall order, and there was no hint of any discussions as of Thursday.
Still, O'Neill says Pittsburghers need news they can trust.
"There's got to be a market for that," he said. "If there isn't, we're going to continue reading on Facebook, 'I don't know if this is true, but I thought I'd pass it along because it's sure interesting.' And that's how people get their news now, and that is why we're much dumber than we were 20 years ago."
If a white knight is coming, there is no sign of it yet. And while the finger-pointing will continue over its demise, it seems certain the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will be going away come May.