After facing the death of its dominant newspaper, Pittsburgh’s media has a surprising turnaround
AP: In the space of a couple of weeks this spring, Pittsburgh media has lived through a near-death experience and a resurrection.
Owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week announced the newspaper’s sale to a nonprofit foundation that said it was committed to keeping it open. A news outlet that predates the U.S. Constitution was due to close on May 3, which would have made the Steel City the nation’s largest community without a city-based paper.
Weeks earlier, the alternative Pittsburgh City Paper, whose staff learned on New Year’s Day that it was closing after 34 years, roared back to life under new ownership.
They were rare positive developments for a local news industry that has seen its share of the opposite over the past two decades — newsrooms shuttered or thinned out, journalists thrown out of work, consumers drifting away. No one is pretending that a true turnaround will be easy in Pittsburgh. One thing that may help is that the city faced a news abyss and was forced to prepare for it. -- nordy
Notes on the last thread!
ReplyDeleteAfter facing the death of its dominant newspaper, Pittsburgh’s media has a surprising turnaround
ReplyDeleteAP: In the space of a couple of weeks this spring, Pittsburgh media has lived through a near-death experience and a resurrection.
Owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week announced the newspaper’s sale to a nonprofit foundation that said it was committed to keeping it open. A news outlet that predates the U.S. Constitution was due to close on May 3, which would have made the Steel City the nation’s largest community without a city-based paper.
Weeks earlier, the alternative Pittsburgh City Paper, whose staff learned on New Year’s Day that it was closing after 34 years, roared back to life under new ownership.
They were rare positive developments for a local news industry that has seen its share of the opposite over the past two decades — newsrooms shuttered or thinned out, journalists thrown out of work, consumers drifting away. No one is pretending that a true turnaround will be easy in Pittsburgh. One thing that may help is that the city faced a news abyss and was forced to prepare for it. -- nordy