The owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced Wednesday that they plan to shut down the storied newspaper this spring.
Block Communications, the Toledo, Ohio-based media company, said in a statement that over the previous 20 years it had lost $350 million running the paper, which traces its roots back to 1786.
“Despite those efforts, the realities facing local journalism make continued cash losses at this scale no longer sustainable,” it said.
The final edition of the paper will be published May 3.
The company’s decision came the same day it suffered a legal setback at the U.S. Supreme Court in its yearslong battle with its staff union, the NewsGuild-CWA. The high court turned down the company’s request to block a lower court order that would force it to reinstate a health care plan for employees specified in their union contract.
Jon Schleuss, the NewsGuild’s president, described the company’s move as “retaliatory” and “stupid.”
“This comes after [they] spend millions of dollars hiring union-busting attorneys, rather than just paying to provide the health insurance that they collectively bargained with employees,” Schleuss told HuffPost.
He added, “The Blocks are really terrible actors who are actually not people who care about providing news to people in Pittsburgh.”
The company, which also owns the Toledo Blade, said in its statement that the court decisions would force it to accept “outdated and inflexible operational practices.”
“We deeply regret the impact this decision will have on Pittsburgh and the surrounding region,” the company said.
“This comes after [they] spend millions of dollars hiring union-busting attorneys, rather than just paying to provide the health insurance that they collectively bargained with employees.”
– Jon Schleuss, president, NewsGuild-CWA
The closure comes at a time when communities across the country are losing their local news outlets as media companies struggle to turn a profit. Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative said in an October report that more than 130 newspapers had shuttered in the previous year alone.
Staffers at the Post-Gazette waged a three-year strike over the cuts to health care coverage and other benefits. They recently ended their work stoppage and returned to the office after an appeals court issued its order requiring the Blocks to honor the collective bargaining agreement and make whole employees who were hurt by the reductions.
As HuffPost reported in 2024, federal labor officials pursued an injunction against Block Communications in federal court on the grounds it had violated employees’ rights by unilaterally changing work conditions.
Schleuss said even if the company shuts down the paper, the union still expects it to repay workers for health care cost increases that violated the contract. He praised staffers for striking as long as they did.
“Journalists at the end of the day have to hold power to account, and that means holding the boss to account when the boss breaks the law,” he said.