Pittsburgh Post-Gazette finds nonprofit buyer to avoid May 3 shutdown

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette finds last-minute nonprofit buyer to keep paper open

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette owners said Tuesday they have secured a buyer that will keep the struggling newspaper operating, barely two weeks before it was due to close on May 3. The company, Block Communications, said the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism agreed to purchase the Post-Gazette’s assets in a move intended to sustain local reporting in western Pennsylvania.

Block Communications announced the decision at a time when the broader newspaper industry has shed jobs, resources and sometimes entire companies amid disruption to the traditional revenue model brought by the internet. The Post-Gazette, whose ancestry dates to 1786, was the first newspaper to open west of the Allegheny Mountains, and the loss of a city-based paper would have left Pittsburgh without one.

Pennsylvania state Sen. Jay Costa, a Democrat whose district covers about half of Pittsburgh, said in remarks cited with the announcement that it was “imperative” for the city to have a newspaper that supports its strength and vibrancy. Costa’s comment was included as the resolution to the closure plans became public.

Under the arrangement described by Block Communications, the Post-Gazette’s new owners said they will continue to print the newspaper on two days—Thursday and Sunday—and will operate a website on the other days. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Venetoulis Institute CEO Bob Cohn said the institute would work to build “a new future for local journalism in Western Pennsylvania,” and he added that the organization was taking lessons from its experience running the digital Baltimore Banner. Cohn said the institute has “learned” that the work takes time, discipline and investment.

The Venetoulis Institute, which opened the Banner in 2022, said it had appointed David Shribman—who served as executive editor of the Post-Gazette from 2003 to 2019—to its board of directors. The Post-Gazette won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in 2018 under Shribman’s leadership, according to the report.

Employees and observers said they were hopeful but also cautious. Steve Mellon, a longtime Post-Gazette photographer, said he was “more hopeful now” for the newspaper’s future, but he said staff members had feared the paper could be sold to a hedge fund that might strip assets from a media company instead of investing in local journalism.

Mellon said questions remained even after the nonprofit buyer was announced, including how many staff members would stay with the newspaper and how much Venetoulis would invest in a paper that has been losing money. He also said journalists had been exploring starting a co-op news website, but that he did not know what would happen to those plans.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a suburban Pittsburgh newspaper, said Tuesday its plans would not change because of the Post-Gazette’s sale. Tribune-Review CEO Jennifer Bertetto said the Tribune-Review had been planning to add staff in Pittsburgh and begin publishing a weekend city edition in the week after the Post-Gazette was set to close.

Andrew Conte, a journalism professor at Point Park University who has worked to encourage small news organizations, said the sale poses a challenge for the region: whether residents and institutions will support local journalism going forward. Sara Innamorato, the executive of Allegheny County, called the Post-Gazette a “cornerstone” of civic life and said in a written statement that the transition to a nonprofit model could strengthen independent, community-centered reporting while helping residents access the information they need to stay engaged and informed.