The owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced Wednesday that they plan to shut down the storied newspaper this spring.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite those efforts, the realities facing local journalism make continued cash losses at this scale no longer sustainable,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The final edition of the paper will be published May 3.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s 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<\/a> the company\u2019s request to block a lower court order that would force it to reinstate a health care plan for employees specified in their union contract.<\/p>\n Jon Schleuss, the NewsGuild\u2019s president, described the company\u2019s move as \u201cretaliatory\u201d and \u201cstupid.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThis 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,\u201d Schleuss told HuffPost.<\/p>\n He added, \u201cThe Blocks are really terrible actors who are actually not people who care about providing news to people in Pittsburgh.\u201d<\/p>\n The company, which also owns the Toledo Blade, said in its statement that the court decisions would force it to accept \u201coutdated and inflexible operational practices.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe deeply regret the impact this decision will have on Pittsburgh and the surrounding region,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n – Jon Schleuss, president, NewsGuild-CWA<\/p>\n 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\u2019s Local News Initiative said in an October report<\/a> that more than 130 newspapers had shuttered in the previous year alone.<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n