Keeping local news alive
Written news media is an endangered species.
The news that the owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette plan to cease publishing in May hit us hard. We are concerned by what this means for the journalists and other workers at the storied paper, by what this means for the paper’s readers, and by what this means for our community at large.
After the news broke of the paper’s imminent closure, many of our readers reached out to ask what it means for the Chronicle as well.
While our staff and board continue to assess the implications of the end of the city’s only daily newspaper, there are a couple immediate takeaways.
Written news media is an endangered species. The rise of the internet, and especially social media, have led to a significant drop in subscribers. Advertising has plummeted and production costs have increased. For many publishers, running a print paper is not financially sustainable. And dropping the print paper to publish online only is not a panacea because digital editions are costly as well, with most ad revenue going to tech companies and not to news publishers.
Nearly 3,500 newspapers and more than 270,000 newspaper jobs have been lost since 2005 in the United States, according to a recent study by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Those closures resulted in 50 million people living in “news deserts,” areas defined as having limited or no access to reliable local news.
This is a communal tragedy.
In 2023, professors at the Harvard Kennedy School sounded the alarm over the demise of local news. “It harms the civic health of the community on virtually every dimension,” said Professor Thomas Patterson of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. “Social trust goes down. Party polarization goes up. Voting locally declines. Accountability of local officials goes away.”
If the Post-Gazette shuts down, Pittsburgh will be the largest U.S. city without a daily newspaper. In the absence of the Post-Gazette, the responsibility of the remaining media outlets will swell. Some of those outlets are reliable news sources, but some are not, particularly when it comes to coverage of issues related to Jews and Israel.
Aside from the Chronicle, the Post-Gazette delivers the most complete reporting on our local Jewish community. Although some readers find the Post-Gazette’s coverage of Israel, antisemitism and other issues important to the Jewish community lacking at times, no other mainstream outlet has been as thorough or as fair overall. While there have been some inflammatory opinion pieces and occasional unbalanced stories, the Post-Gazette has remained largely objective.
If the Post-Gazette shutters, the voices of other local media outlets will be amplified out of necessity. We should be wary. Some of those outlets pride themselves on what they call “advocacy journalism.” That’s not journalism, though. It’s advocacy.
So, the Chronicle’s role will become even more vital if and when the Post-Gazette ceases production. In the face of shrinking mainstream coverage, the Chronicle must and will continue to be the definitive source for local Jewish news. We take this responsibility seriously. And we hope we will be around for years to come to carry it out.
One more takeaway from the potential closure of the Post-Gazette: If you want a paper to survive, you must support it. While the Post-Gazette is a for-profit publication solely dependent on subscriptions and advertising, the Chronicle is a nonprofit. We are free to our Jewish community and are sustained by advertising and donations. We welcome your philanthropic support and encourage you to support our advertisers as well.
We are realistic. We know the Chronicle cannot take the place of Pittsburgh’s daily paper. But we will fill in the gaps where we can. We will do it with integrity and reliability. And, with your support, we will ensure the stories of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community continue to be heard. PJC
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