PITTSBURGH SET TO LOSE IT'S LAST PRINT NEWSPAPER
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to shut down after losing legal battle with union
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is ceasing operations on May 3, it announced Wednesday, following a series of legal losses that capped off a years-long labor strike.
Block Communications Inc., the Post-Gazette’s parent company, said it has lost more than $350 million operating the paper over the last two decades. The company said that the realities facing local journalism make “continued cash losses at this scale no longer.”
The union said in a release Wednesday that the company has spent years “wasting millions of dollars losing court battles to deny their workers’ basic rights,” and noted employees had not received any across-the-board wage increases over the prior 20 years.
The paper was founded in 1786 and formed under its present name in 1927, via a merger of the Pittsburgh Gazette Times and The Pittsburgh Post. It has an average paid circulation of more than 83,000 subscribers and produces print editions on Thursdays and Sundays, according to its website.
The paper’s staff won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for its coverage of the October 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Eleven people were killed in the antisemitic attack.
The announcement came after the Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the paper’s emergency appeal to block a lower-court order requiring the paper to abide by an earlier labor agreement it reached with its union, the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.
Justice Samuel Alito, who handles emergency cases arising from Pennsylvania by default, had temporarily halted the order until the high court issued its ruling.
Post-Gazette workers returned in November, more than three years after beginning a strike over claims the publisher violated its collective bargaining agreement and “unilaterally imposed work rules that worsened health care coverage and other benefits.”
“Instead of simply following the law, the owners chose to punish local journalists and the city of Pittsburgh,” said Andrew Goldstein, the president of the union. “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.”
Block Communications had warned of the consequences of losing the legal fight, saying the labor contract, agreed to in 2014, imposes “outdated and inflexible operational practices” that would make continued publication impossible.
The Block family said in a statement that it was “proud of the service the Post-Gazette has provided to Pittsburgh for nearly a century.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5677562-pittsburgh-post-gazette-shut-down/