Pittsburgh just sent a chilling warning for American democracy

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced on Jan. 7, 2026, that it will cease all operations effective May 3. The daily newspaper, founded in 1786, has been the city’s paper of record for nearly a century and is one of the oldest newspapers in the country.

Block Communications, the company that owns the Post-Gazette, says the paper has lost “hundreds of millions of dollars” during the past two decades. The shuttering of the Post-Gazette comes after a three-year strike by newspaper employees who were asking management for better wages and working conditions. The strike ended in November 2025 after an appellate court ruled in favor of the union workers. The Post-Gazette was found to have violated federal labor law by cutting health care benefits and failing to bargain in good faith. Then, on Jan. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the paper, stating that the Post-Gazette was required to adjust its health insurance coverage for union members. Hours later, Block Communications announced that the paper would shut down.

Victor Pickard, an expert on the U.S. media and its role in democracy, was born and raised just outside Pittsburgh. He talked to Cassandra Stone, The Conversation U.S. Pittsburgh editor, about what the closing means for local journalism and democracy.

CS: Newspapers have been in decline for decades. How significant is this closure?

VP: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has long been a vital part of the local community throughout western Pennsylvania. This would be the first major metropolitan newspaper closing since the Tampa Tribune shut its doors in 2016, and it’s a devastating blow to residents in that entire area of the state. Block Communications also closed down the Pittsburgh City Paper, which is an alt-weekly newspaper in Pittsburgh, in January 2026. The loss of the Post-Gazette will likely create a major gap in local news coverage.

How much did the labor strike from 2022-25 affect the newspaper’s profitability?

I wouldn’t pin the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s loss of profitability on the strike — which was legitimate and did have a profound impact — as much as on the structural forces affecting nearly all local newspapers at this time.

Throughout the country, local journalism increasingly is no longer a profitable enterprise. The core business model of being reliant on advertising revenue has irreparably collapsed, and subscriptions rarely generate enough financial support.

Since the early 2000s, the U.S. has lost about 40 percent of its local newspapers and about 75 percent of the jobs in newspaper journalism, according to a 2025 report from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. A study published last year by Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack shows that in 2002, there were roughly 40 journalists per 100,000 people in the United States. Today, it’s down to about eight journalists.

This evisceration of local journalism leads to ever-expanding news deserts across the country, where tens of millions of Americans are living in areas with little or no local news media whatsoever.

How might this affect local civic engagement and democracy in Pittsburgh?

Democracy requires a free and functional press system. When a local newspaper closes, fewer people vote and get involved in local politics, and corruption and polarization increase.

Without local news outlets, people often turn to national news or even “pink slime” news sites. These sites masquerade as official local media institutions but in fact are often propagandistic outlets that amplify misinformation and disinformation.

With the retreat of newspapers, people are receiving less high-quality news and information. This means that people living in these areas are less knowledgeable about politics. They often don’t know who’s running for office in their communities, or what their political platforms are, and there’s just less civic engagement in general.

Most Americans have 24/7 access to unlimited news and information through their social media feeds, including local news influencers. Does this counteract the loss of local reporting?

I think an important distinction needs to be made between carefully reported and fact-checked articles and what seems like a glut of information at our fingertips at all times. Beyond the surface-level appearance of countless news sites, social media reports offer relatively few new facts that have been borne out of rigorous reporting.

You could say that Americans are living in a new golden age of political discourse, where we constantly see a churn of social media-based forms of expression. But that’s not necessarily journalism.

When we’re talking about the collapse of newspapers and fewer newspaper journalists working their beats, it would be an entirely different story if that journalism were being replaced by other institutions, by influencers, by podcasters. But many of those outlets are amplifying opinion-based commentary and punditry.

That’s not the same thing as reporting that adheres to journalistic norms and introduces new information into the world. Losing this kind of knowledge production hurts communities everywhere – from small towns and rural areas to major cities like Pittsburgh.