Another chance for the Post-Gazette is a win for the entire region
At a time when newspapers of all sizes continue to struggle, Western Pennsylvania got some good news Tuesday: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced a buyer for the storied organization has been found.
The 11th hour news capped months of concern across the region after the paper’s owners announced their intention to shut the institution down by early this May.
It may seem odd to see another paper operating just up the road applaud the salvation of the Post-Gazette. After all, we sometimes compete for advertising dollars, readers and the chance to be the first to break important stories affecting readers in the region.
I’ll share a little industry secret: No matter how competitive genuine, fact-based news organizations are with each other, the competition is largely friendly. We often collaborate, especially as traditional news media has continued to struggle and longtime local resources continue to vanish.
The importance of reliable, unbiased reporting transcends any sort of strong animosity or overly cutthroat competition.
The closure of the Post-Gazette would have left Pittsburgh as the largest community without a dedicated, city-based newspaper in the country.
Pittsburgh boasts a population of more than 300,000 people in the actual municipality alone. Expand the view to the entire metropolitan area and the number jumps to more than 2.4 million. That’s a gaping hole.
While the new owner, the nonprofit Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, will be making some changes to how the newspaper operates and disseminates its coverage, the bottom line is the Post-Gazette will continue to operate.
It has a chance to continue to provide the important, local information the nearly 2.5 million residents of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area need to keep abreast of current events and government actions. It will allow them to make the informed decisions that are essential to their own lives and by extension impact the entirety of Western Pennsylvania.
That’s good news for everyone in the region.
— JP
