Meet the new Pittsburgh Post-Gazette bosses, same as the old bosses

After members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh won their strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in late 2025, which had lasted for over 3 years, they were notified in January that the paper's wealthy owners, the Block family and Block Communications Inc., were shutting down operations. Then, in a stunning turn of events, the Post-Gazette was purchased in April by the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which also owns The Banner in Baltimore, MD. While Post-Gazette workers were cautiously optimistic about the news, the union learned last week that the Venetoulis Institute is cutting at least 40 percent of its staff, including 80 percent of the union workers who participated in the recently ended strike.

In this episode of Working People, we speak with a panel of union members and former Post-Gazette employees about what will happen to them and their coworkers, to the Post-Gazette itself, and to journalism in the Steel City. Panelists include: Andrew Goldstein, a now-former Post-Gazette education reporter and still-acting president of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh; Helen Fallon, a longtime copyeditor for the Post-Gazette and professor emerita at Point Park University in Pittsburgh; and Erin Hebert, a now-former copyeditor and designer for the Post-Gazette and First Vice President of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.

Additional links/info:

Pittsburgh Alliance for People-Empowered Reporting (PAPER) website
Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh website, Facebook page, and Instagram
Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh: "Incoming Post-Gazette ownership slashes staff, purges former strikers"
Riddhi Setty, Columbia Journalism Review, "The Venetoulis Institute goes to Pittsburgh"
Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / TRNN, "They won their strike fair and square. Now their rich bosses are closing up shop"
Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / TRNN, "The longest-running strike in the US is over—and the workers won"

Featured Music:

Jules Taylor, Working People Theme Song

Credits:

Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(388)

Who's afraid of Chris Smalls?

At a live event hosted at Red Emma's Cooperative Bookstore and Coffeehouse in Baltimore, Maryland, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez got to sit down for a deep and wide-ranging conversation wit...

8 Jun 54min

'They were going after everyone': Baltimore security officers fired and removed from schedules after lawful strike

Nearly a year after workers voted to authorize a strike, non-union city and commercially contracted security officers in Baltimore, MD, walked off the job on April 9 on an Unfair Labor Practice strike...

27 Mai 29min

Kim Kelly: Coal miners are dying, and Trump betrayed them

Since the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump and his acolytes, rightwing media, and coal industry barons and lobbyists have obsessively painted the picture of Trump as a friend to coal miners an...

20 Mai 33min

Over 4,000 UAW members on strike at Harvard University

After 14 months of fruitless contract negotiations with the Harvard University administration, over 4,000 workers represented by the Harvard Graduate Students Union (HGSU-UAW Local 5118) walked off th...

12 Mai 50min

Alec Baldwin backs union drive at Starbucks

After decades of decline, the organized labor movement in the US has seen a resurgence in rank-and-file militancy over the last decade, with increased strike actions and union drives in industries acr...

1 Mai 25min

May 1: A Nationwide 'Economic Blackout' Against Billionaires and Authoritarianism

Inspired by January's mass strike against ICE terror in Minnesota, a vast coalition of labor unions, democratic organizations, and community groups are organizing a nationwide economic blackout on Fri...

29 Apr 47min

'The rain was black': A plant explosion set off a toxic bomb in this Louisiana town

On Aug. 22, 2025, the small-town lives of residents living near the Smitty's Supply facility in Roseland, LA, changed forever when an explosion occurred at the automotive lubricant plant. The explosio...

15 Apr 52min