Where Goes Pittsburgh So Goes the Nation

 

     This past week, I'd published a novel entitled Ink and Iron about a young, crusading journalist in 1919 Boston. As a historical novelist, it was right in my wheelhouse. For the fourth time, I'd written a novel about real-life historical events as the backdrop (the others being Tatterdemalion, Gods of Our Fathers and the recent The Final Bullet). 

     In creating Moira Delmonico, that young, crusading journalist for the post WW I Boston Globe, I was able to reacquaint myself with what I've learned about print media since getting into blogging in early 2005 (Yes, I've been doing this for 21 years, which, I guess, makes me the IF Stone of blogging). But not only is Moira an engaging character, one certainly capable of supporting a feature-length novel, but in doing so I was able to reacquaint myself with old school journalism standards that seem almost quaint today. My research into print journalism in 1919 America also reacquainted me with the importance of newspapers then and now.

     In the days of the Boston Police Strike in late summer 1919, newspapers were king. Obviously, there was no radio, no television, no internet. And a cub reporter like Moira working for a large newspaper like the Boston Globe, which then had a circulation of about 115,000 was, if not sitting in the catbird seat, certainly had a bright future if their talent and ethics were up to the task.

     In Ink and Iron, Moira gets several articles either shot down or is forced to rewrite them because of warnings from the legal department. This was not to show her as a reckless yellow journalist nor the Globe's legal staff as the bad guys. At the center of the book was the tension between Moira's factual stories and the lawyers' insistence that publishing her pieces could land them in court fighting a libel suit. The Supreme Court had already issued more than one decision prior to 1919 that libel was not protected under the first amendment.

     Much of the book consists of external and internal dialogues with Moira wrestling with the stringent ethics of her profession. The old chestnuts of journalism were faithfully trotted out: "It's not what you know but what you can prove." "Don't become the story." "Triple source everything." "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." "Journalism is history's first draft", etc.

     In 1919, people got their news from newspapers and that was it. Everything else was rumor and conjecture. There was an implicit trust between the reading public and print media. They just trusted that what they were reading was factual and not tainted by bias or agendas.

     Sadly, that day has long since passed. Some of the bigger papers have been bought up by billionaires (As opposed to Adolph Ochs, who, in the 19th century, bought the New York Times with virtually no money and a pack of lies). Others, like Charles Taylor, who bought the Globe shortly after its founding and who makes two appearances in my book, were wealthy, yes, but they had an intuitive grasp of the importance and the necessity of print journalism. 

     As we all know, a free press is indispensable to a democratic republic. Removing an ethical and responsible Fourth Estate pollutes, warps and corrupts a media ecosystem and, without that all-important bulwark of said media, it has a deleterious ripple effect across the land. Corruption is all but inevitable.

     That's why it was so alarming to me to read that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was shuttering its operations on May 3, 2026. This is alarming because the Post-Gazette is one of the oldest newspapers in America, it being founded in 1786, the year before the US Constitution was signed. It predates venerable institutions like the New York Times and Washington Post by generations.

     It was by far the largest newspaper in western Pennsylvania and had survived when literally thousands of other newspapers had failed since the 18th century. Then its staff went on a three year-long strike when they demanded better wages and benefits. The Supreme Court had ruled against the paper. The paper's ownership, Block Communications, then decided that closing down for good was the only viable option. As far as I know, they never made the slightest attempt to even sell it. Just days ago, Block Communications also shut down the Pittsburgh City Paper, an alt-weekly.

     These closures will obviously leave a massive media desert in western Pennsylvania.

     Just to play Devil's Advocate for a moment, in terms of profitability and influence, newspapers have been in serious decline for the last two or three decades. But your larger newspapers are invariably corporate entities run by executives and bean-counters, bottom-line-driven types with MBAs who have no real allegiance to or appreciation of the media. And if they feel they need to lay people off, they will do so without paying much, if any, heed to the effects on the media ecosystem. Their only focus is maintaining a certain profit margin, not in ensuring the media's role in holding peoples' feet to the fire or informing the public about they need to know.

     Over the last quarter century, America has lost about 40% of its local papers and 75% of those jobs have been lost. Local news just doesn't sell, any more, and the shrinking pool is increasingly leaving us with nationally-focused outlets like the Times, the Post and USA Today.

     Former House Speaker Tip O'Neil once famously observed that "all politics is local" and the same ought to apply to journalism to some degree. People ought to be interested in what's happening in their own communities for the simple reason that it often directly affects their lives.

     Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack did a study in 2002 showing that back then, there were 40 journalists per 100,000 people. Today, it's down to eight.

     And when large local papers like the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette close down, it results in fewer people voting. An uninformed populace is an incurious and disengaged one. And, as history has shown us time and again, in the absence of actual news, the corrupt and unscrupulous will move in, resulting in propaganda mills and "pink slime" sites. Often, these are online outlets and not print publications but those who still wish to stay engaged and informed will gladly flock to these sites to get what passes for news.

     But, as Caleb Carr warned us 26 years ago in Killing Time, "Information is not necessarily knowledge".

     I'd love to think that newspapers will endure despite current trends in reader tastes and Protean technology and business models. I'd also love to think that local news will endure but that will require a patchwork, collective effort at the local, grassroots level. And newspapers have always danced on that high wire, that balancing act that pits profitability and viability versus its very necessity in a free republic. 

     And there's no viable substitute for a free and independent press.