{"id":80915,"date":"2026-01-08T03:53:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T03:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/80915\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T03:53:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T03:53:50","slug":"pittsburgh-post-gazette-ownership-announces-its-shutting-down-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/80915\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ownership announces it&#8217;s shutting down paper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>FILE PHOTO: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Aug. 26, 2016. <\/p>\n<p>Raymond Boyd | Michael Ochs Archives | Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0Pittsburgh Post-Gazette&#8217;s\u00a0owners announced Wednesday the paper will be shutting down in a few months, citing financial losses.<\/p>\n<p>Block Communications Inc.\u00a0announced it will cease publication on\u00a0May 3. The paper is printed on Thursdays and Sundays and says on its website the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.post-gazette.com\/about\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">average paid circulation<\/a>\u00a0is 83,000.<\/p>\n<p>A couple dozen union members returned to work at the\u00a0Post-Gazette\u00a0in November after a three-year strike.<\/p>\n<p>More than five years ago, the newspaper declared it had reached a bargaining impasse with the\u00a0Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh\u00a0and unilaterally imposed terms and conditions of employment on those workers. The paper was later found to have bargained in bad faith by making offers that were not intended to help reach a deal and by declaring an impasse prematurely.<\/p>\n<p>The announcement that Block was shutting it down came on the same day the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/search.aspx?filename=\/docket\/docketfiles\/html\/public\/25a725.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">U.S. Supreme Court\u00a0declined<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0PG Publishing Co. Inc.&#8217;s\u00a0emergency appeal to halt an\u00a0National Labor Relations Board\u00a0order that forced it to abide by health care coverage policies in an expired union contract.<\/p>\n<p>Andrew Goldstein, president of the\u00a0Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, said the paper&#8217;s journalists have a long history of award-winning work.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Instead of simply following the law, the owners chose to punish local journalists and the city of Pittsburgh,&#8221; Goldstein said. The union said employees were notified in a video on Zoom in which company officials did not speak live.<\/p>\n<p>The Post-Gazette said\u00a0Block Communications\u00a0has lost hundreds of millions of dollars over two decades in operating the paper, and the company said it deemed &#8220;continued cash losses at this scale no longer sustainable.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Block family said in a statement it was &#8220;proud of the service the\u00a0Post-Gazette\u00a0has provided to\u00a0Pittsburgh\u00a0for nearly a century.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A phone message seeking comment was left Wednesday at\u00a0Block Communications\u00a0headquarters in\u00a0Toledo, Ohio.<\/p>\n<p>The paper traces its roots to 1786, when the\u00a0Pittsburgh Gazette\u00a0began as a four-page weekly, and became a leading advocate for the abolition of slavery in the 19th century. It went through a series of mastheads and owners before 1927, when\u00a0Paul Block\u00a0obtained the paper and named it the\u00a0Post-Gazette.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FILE PHOTO: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Aug. 26, 2016. Raymond Boyd | Michael Ochs Archives |&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[40988,26943,2341,73,75,74,40989],"class_list":{"0":"post-80915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-breaking-news-business","9":"tag-business-news","10":"tag-media","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","13":"tag-pittsburgh-news","14":"tag-publishing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}