About the Guest:
Award-winning writer Tony Norman is the longtime columnist and editorial writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. A former Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan and an adjunct journalism professor at Chatham University, he now freelances for several local and national publications.
Episode Transcript:
CORY BARKER: In 1786, just a few years after the American Revolution, a small frontier town called Pittsburgh got its first newspaper. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, then known as the Gazette, was founded to serve a growing democracy, to circulate verified information, and to help a young nation argue its way toward the truth. For more than two centuries, that mission held. The paper exposed corruption, amplified unheard voices, and helped give western Pennsylvania a shared set of facts. But today, the Post-Gazette is no longer a symbol of democratic promise. It’s become a case study in something else entirely: the slow, internal collapse of a once-great news institution. Newsrooms hollowed out. Journalists sidelined. Editorial independence eroded. What was built to challenge power has increasingly struggled to function at all.
MATT JORDAN: That unraveling is the focus of Requiem for the Post-Gazette, an essay by journalist Tony Norman. Tony spent decades inside the newsroom, watching the paper change and, ultimately, lose its footing. We're going to talk with Tony about the decline of the Post-Gazette, the forces reshaping American journalism, and why the loss of strong local news isn’t just a media story: it’s a warning about what happens when the Fourth Estate can no longer do its job. Tony Norman, welcome to News Over Noise.
TONY NORMAN: It's good to be here. Thanks for thanks for the invite.
MATT JORDAN: I reached out to you because I read your requiem for the Post-Gazette, and it struck me that this is a almost a perfect piece for encapsulating what's going on in the news industry, right now. The fact that you worked at a paper for so long, and then the depth of local knowledge that you bring to that story is, in a way, precisely what makes local reporting so important. So, when did you start working at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette?
TONY NORMAN: I began in November of 1988, and I was at the Post-Gazette until August of 2022. So pretty much three decades and for the most part, it was very fruitful. I really enjoyed my time there. It was professionally a godsend in every way. It launched me into the middle, the solid middle class. When I when I started that job with the Post-Gazette, I was transitioning from a telemarketing position, and, I had a son on the way, and, you know, newly married and the whole thing. So, it made quite a difference in my life and in my professional trajectory. I mean, I had always wanted to be a journalist, and that was a time when you could walk into a newspaper off the street with only a portfolio under your arms and basically ask for an assignment or a job or freelance or something. And folks were more than willing to entertain that. So, it was a different era and one that I'm going to miss very much. The camaraderie that came from working in a very large newsroom, the competition against another newspaper, and how that sharpens you as a journalist. There was just so much richness in my experience as a journeyman journalist. So, I was profoundly affected by the announcement that the Post-Gazette would be suspending publication this May.
MATT JORDAN: So, you describe a big kind of change in that news environment, right? First, that you wanted to be a journalist. It's there fewer and fewer people wanting to do that. But that it was a sought-after job in the center of a big city where there was competition between two big and strong newsrooms. How is that changed now, and when did you start to see some signs of that shifting?
TONY NORMAN: Well, there was a strike in 1992 that resulted in the closing of the Pittsburgh Press. So already, I mean, I joined in ‘88, and so in ‘92, we already had an existential crisis, as it were, where it's formerly. There were two newspapers now, and it was only one after the strike. And it changed the whole horizon in a way. There was still the Pittsburgh Tribune review, but it was more of a suburban paper. But there was an intensity that began to lessen. And then from there on, the Post-Gazette, in a sense, became self-satisfied, as it were. It was the premier news gathering operation in Pittsburgh. After that, we had partnerships with KDKA television. But I would say that, you know, when you think you're the only news major news source, it changes the way you look at competition. It changes the way you look at a city. You become more myopic and you think you might have a monopoly. And I think that you begin to make decisions and choices that aren't always for the best in terms of your employees or the people you serve in a community. You know, as a journalistic entity, you get arrogant, you get arrogant. If you don't have people chasing you, as it were. If you're not in deep, deep competition with another entity, you need competition in order to. For democracy to thrive too.
CORY BARKER: If we stay there on this point for a second, can you give us an example of how you feel like the move to one major newsmaker in the community with the Post-Gazette, one way that that changed how the Post-Gazette thought about its coverage, whether as far as things that they wanted to cover more or cover less explicitly or something that just kind of evolved implicitly as a result of not having that competition as you've described?
TONY NORMAN: I think it was a slow evolution, and I think it had its apotheosis pretty much as we were approached, like a few years ago, basically after the Trump election. Number one, you know, in 2016, when the publisher felt at that point it was okay in a sense to some, his nose. But its nose, let's say the institution could thumb its nose at the readers who clearly were anti-Trump. But the Post-Gazette follow the path of what it might have considered at least resistance, which was embracing Trump and embracing MAGA, embracing all the things that our readers despise. And I think the logic was, where are they going to go? Where are they going to go? The competition, as it were, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is also a conservative newspaper. So, what happens if you take what was formerly a center left newspaper and begin to end over that line so that it becomes more avowedly right wing or conservative? We're just giving the people what they want is what's the logic that was at play. And you saw the things that came out of that, and you saw offensive editorials defending racist positions. You saw, I would say, a critical theory about what the George Floyd protests were about. You saw the firing of a popular political cartoonist, editorial cartoonists who, you know, any day now is going to get a Pulitzer. Why would you get rid of someone who was who is such a cultural asset to the paper because he makes too much fun of Trump? And so the failure to read The Room in Pittsburgh, the failure to understand that whatever is happening out in Fayette County and Armstrong County and so on in more conservative places, Butler and whatever, and Pittsburgh were your bread and butter is still solidly blue, and it's not at all open to the idea of a MAGA and newspaper and supporting it. And so, I think that it was a gradual thing, but it was definitely there for maybe even decades, but it just sort of fell off a cliff. And then as you add to the pandemic and you head into, you know, the shutdown of American life, the natural conservatism of the publishers really comes to bear, and you end up with basically people quitting en masse. Basically, what you're seeing at CBS right now, you know, it wasn't through layoffs. It was just people decided the most talented people and the most out of folks decided that they had had enough. And the Post-Gazette was really dependent upon the talent of its contributors, of its writers, of its editors. So, all of that, and if they lost faith in the general direction of the paper, not just for ideological, but just for planning the damn thing. I mean, as the circulation of major newspapers is falling off of a cliff, you know, around 2014, 2015 and so forth, what do we do as an institution? We go out and we build a state-of-the-art printing plant at a time when other newspapers are cutting back on printing. I mean, we just got hornswoggled by someone who said, hey, what you people who are struggling with making your bills need as a new printing plant. And so, in order to finance a printing plant, you take money from its promise to the union, and you use it to build this, white elephant. And then all of the customers that you thought you were going to have, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, you know, all these papers that, you know, need to be printed somewhere, you know, in the Mid-Atlantic states in order to distribute, cut down on their costs. You know, you built this plant and those customers, for whatever reason, decide, yeah, we're going to stick with those current printers and you’re stuck doing fliers for supermarkets. And sooner or later you run out of the resources to print your own paper because labor costs money. So, what you end up with, then you end up cutting days, cutting days for your newspaper. So, it's a total lack of foresight and planning on a part of the managers of the Post-Gazette.
MATT JORDAN: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense in what you're just describing a long series there of or sins of commission. Right?
TONY NORMAN: Right.
MATT JORDAN: Things that were done that were… but it also strikes me that behind what you're saying are a lot of sins of omission, right. That when you're cutting reporters, you know, like the stuff that comes through in your essay on the Gazette, it's just the amazing resources that each of these reporters and their terms, of their knowledge of local context, their understanding of Pittsburgh culture, their understanding of all of that stuff. And that's precisely what makes local journalism so powerful, right? That it's got those people who are the knowledge people, right? And—
TON NORMAN: Right, the storytellers, the folks who are out there looking for the stories that folks find compelling, and they know their beats and they know what real stories are, and they know how to convey it in a compelling way. I think the lack of respect for the people who created the wealth, as it were. That's the problem with third or fourth generation owners. Basically, they're the folks who inherit things. They're not even folks who have been in the trenches and the folks who have invested the most in terms of their talent, in terms of just bringing their everything to bear to make this paper successful, are not consulted about the future of the paper. They're basic… we're, you know, we're basically just pawns in the game. And so, it doesn't take long before we feel less than invested. And then the normal labor management hassles exacerbate things. And the next thing you know we're at loggerheads. And the outcome is going to be something really horrible like the death of a newspaper that's been around for two centuries. You know, the family, understandably, I suppose, want to be able to get some money out of this. And so, they're going to sell it to the lowest bidder in the end, and that's what we'll end up with. Or it will dissolve. Or if it's lucky, a nonprofit will figure out a way to reimagine a non-physical newspaper, one that's online, but that one that still fulfills all the responsibilities that a daily used to do. We can't afford to become a news desert, and we won't become a news desert here in Pittsburgh. Something is going to arise out of the smoldering ruins, like a phoenix. Something will. The question is, what will it be? And whether it will be charismatic enough to attract enough readers to sustain it.
MATT JORDAN: If you're just joining us, this is News Over Noise. I'm Matt Jordan
CORY BARKER: And I'm Cory Barker.
MATT JORDAN: We're talking with journalist Tony Norman about the decline of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and what it reveals about the pressures facing the Fourth Estate in America. In your essay, you say that the mission is to be the bulwark against civic ignorance and misinformation.
TONY NORMAN: Yes.
MATT JORDAN: Why is that so important in a city like Pittsburgh?
TONY NORAMN: Oh, because we're, we're a city of con men and women. So, if there isn't anyone looking, crime will be happening. And I'm not talking about stick ups and the minor stuff. I mean, that kind of crime is actually down. I'm talking about crime in the suites. And people here are very… I think folks give institutions the benefit of the doubt, and they don't understand that even the most revered institution needs someone to look over its shoulders. Otherwise, you end up with inadvertent or purposeful thievery. And that might be the attitude of like an old school, ink-stained wretch like myself. But without journalism, active journalism happening in a city like Pittsburgh, and I think all cities, but especially Pittsburgh, will trend towards entropy. And it's just obvious the things that the Post-Gazette and other newspapers have lost sight of inevitably become like a rotten tooth that you ignore until you can anymore. And if you look at what's happening in Harrisburg, it's criminal. It's absolutely. But there was a time when the Post-Gazette and the Philadelphia Inquirer were all over Harrisburg. Now, unless some of the smaller independent, you know, like PA Spotlight or someone you know, catches it, we don't catch it.
MATT JORDAN: Yeah.
TONY NORMAN: And Pennsylvania's crucial to the democratic survival of America. You know, when you look at the machinations that the Trump administration is putting into play when it comes to the next vote, they have all these right-wing cronies spread across the state. And so many people have bad will in our legislature that something horrible is bound to happen. That attacks on our democracy. And who will be there to sort of ring the alarm before it happens? Journalism is most useful before the disaster happens. Otherwise, it's just a postmortem that may or may not get out there. And I think that, the crippling of the Post-Gazette or the elimination of the Post-Gazette and the fact that the Philadelphia Inquirer is now a shadow of its former self is really bad news for what happens in Pennsylvania. And it's not just up to those two newspapers, you know. Yeah, I think PA Spotlight, some of the other papers that have stepped up in recent years, actually do a magnificent job. It's just a matter of resources. They don't have the ability to allocate the resources that are really needed to cover this state, the way it needs to be covered. But thank God for them, because at least there is an early warning system. I mean, I don't want to make it sound like it, you know? Oh, man, the Post-Gazette, you know, like collapse is over. You know, it's all Apocalypse Now. Not at all. But it would be better if the Post-Gazette existed than not existed.
MATT JORDAN: In your tenure at the Post-Gazette. When did that coverage of Harrisburg start to dry up?
TONY NORMAN: Oh, I would say, actually, the late aughts, you know, 2011, 2012, it was no longer, desirable to be because the resources had been cut back. You know what? It formerly been like a three-man bureau became a one-man bureau. How can one person cover as juicy a territory as the Harrisburg legislature? When our Washington bureau went from three persons to one person. So, you often had Harrisburg and, you know, Washington just teaming up to cover state and federal. It's just too much for one person, two persons.
MATT JORDAN: Right. Right.
Thinking about some of the effects of the erosion of the publication over the last 15 or 20 years. You mentioned both in your piece and in one of your answers earlier, the kind of effect that has on people who are still working there, right, that between the rumors and the cuts and the various experiences that people are having while they're still trying to do the best work they can.
TONY NORMAN: Yes.
CORY BARKER: I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about what that felt like, you know, for you and in talking to colleagues? Can you give us a little bit more insight about what it feels like to work at a place that has this reputation, and a lot of people working there know what it feels like to do great work at a great place, and then to feel it slowly and then maybe more quickly eroding all of that kind of go away.
TONY NORMAN: Right. The folks who have been there for a long time, like myself, were feeling just a deep alienation from the owners, not so much from management, like our immediate managers are in the same boat we were in. So there was always a sense of like, we didn't realize how good we had at once upon a time we didn't realize, and I certainly didn't realize it, that when I joined the paper in ‘88, that that was like the golden age, that all these eccentric characters that all these great writers and these great editors and mentors and people were just all around. You take them for granted. You just think that that's just part of, like, the, the milieu of journalism. You know, you're surrounded by superior reporters who show you how to do things or superior writers and do this and that. And so forth. And you just sort of like, gobble as much as you can and you just, you know, are incentivized to just sort of grow into a better writer and reporter and journalist. So, there's that. And then slowly the resources, like in Jenga get slowly taken away. You know, this board, that board, this and that and so forth and so on. And as it's happening, you know, you just think, well, you know, this is not optimal, but, you know, we'll get through this and so forth. We'll reverse it. You know, we're the Post-Gazette. You know, we just assume we're going to be here 50 years from now. So, let's do our part to continue telling great stories and so forth. But as it's happening, you know, there's like the old analogy, you know, like the frog boiling in water. Yeah. You know, you do feel it and you know, but you don't know what to make of it because you can't imagine that the publisher and his family will blow it all up. You just don't figured that's going to happen. It's like the farthest thing from your mind.
CORY BARKER: One way to look at what's happened at the Post-Gazette is to put it in context. With so many other newspapers that have declined over the last 25 years. But I'm curious, in your perspective, what is more specific to this particular institution that makes it different from just the standard decline of print, declining ad revenue? All of those things are legitimate.
TONY NORMAN: Right.
CORY BARKER: And in part of this story. But what else is sort of there that's specific to this story that you think really underlines why we're in the situation we're in now?
TONY NORMAN: Well, this is probably sound brutal and unfair, but I think that the Post-Gazette has lacked leadership or a vision or strategy for so long that it was never able to get a good sense of what the horizon was. It did not help that the leadership was not interested in being a partner to its labor unions, and as labor unions basically held the fate of the paper in its hands, and there was just no. You. It was it was it was one of those Gordian knots. You know, you couldn't figure out how to get out of this great situation. And that's not any different. I mean, every newspaper has its own sort of, to quote Tolstoy or paraphrase Tolstoy, you know, you know, every family is, you know, you know, has this problem that it has its own problems in its own way. You know, every newspaper has its own problem specific to it. But the Post-Gazette were the fact that we didn't have any leadership that could see beyond the bottom line. You know, at any given moment that did not have a sense of the future and did not have a sense of the possibilities of a strong regional newspaper that could take in the urban and suburban and the ex-burban and all the various prisms of the Western Pennsylvania experience. I know that some sort of rambling attempt to ask you a question, but I think it was just the fact that the PG, its biggest problem was that there was no visionary on board, and that there were basically two guys, you know, John and Allan Block, who had no idea of what was going on at any given time. They just wanted to, like, make sure that no one in the union felt comfortable that the union was expendable and that the workers were expendable, and that we should shut up and thank God for what they gave us. And so, I think that was the biggest problem I mean, I cleverer people than me can probably look for, you know, find other things. I just I think the problem was just, you know, the leadership.
MATT JORDAN: Just to start wrapping us up a little bit. Ecosystems are always evolving. Right? And as you said before, the something will emerge in the place of the Post-Gazette. If you were to put on your prognostications soothsaying-hat here for a second. What do you see emerging like who are you writing for now in terms of multiple outlets? What do you see kind of trying to fill that vacuum?
TONY NORMAN: Oh, well, well, actually, right now I'm working on my novel. But but there are multiple outlets. I mean, here in Pittsburgh, I think Public Source is probably going to be in the mix. This is bizarre, isn't it? A businessman by the name of Kevin Acklin, who was talking to various entities to make sure that there's a newspaper here in town, and he and he's leading a group of businessmen. And as we know, the problem with businessmen is that they have sometimes they have interests. There are in conflict with Post what journalists do. So, I'm not sitting around thinking that. Yeah, you know, the businessmen will save us. The businessmen never save us. You know, I'm sure you know, if some car dealership decides to be a part of, an effort to keep a newspaper in town, they want to make sure that whatever that entity is called or whatever it does, that it doesn't do any exposes on car dealerships. Yeah. I mean, I believe and it might be totally naive, it might be totally naive, but they're just so many interested parties, so many writers and editors who want to see this continue, that something will pop. You know, the Pittsburgh Union Progress is, is still in the game. They're going to come back, no doubt. I think you're going to see, migration to Substack by a lot of really talented people who might sort of aggregate on Substack to make, you know, like to sort of like be a, a Justice League, as it were.
MATT JORDAN: Right.
TONY NORMAN: Until they can figure out a way to formalize it and make it more than just sort of like, you know, single personalities that are being followed. I actually am optimistic that there may be a lag. There may be like a lag of, you know, 6 to 9 months, whatever, a maybe a year. But I think and I swear I'm not dodging the question, but I just, I mean, I don't know what's going to happen. Right. But I strongly believe that we're not going to be without a local resources when it comes to reading, you know, reporting on what's going on. The foundations may not want to put a lot of money into it right now, because they're waiting for the dust to clear. But someone's going to step up. And before you know it you know, as long as no one is stupid enough to want to go by the Post-Gazette our printing press, you know, it's, it's going to result in something really, really beautiful and important and necessary.
MATT JORDAN: Well, I really appreciate that, bit of optimism you ended on there. I'm so thirsty for optimism these days that I'm going to use that and say, thanks so much for joining us and sharing your story.
TONY NORMAN: All right, guys. Take it easy.
MATT JORDAN: Until next time, stay well and well informed. News Over Noise is produced by the Penn State Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and WPSU. This program has been funded by the office of the Executive Vice President and Provost at Penn State and is part of the Penn State News Literacy Initiative.
[END OF TRANSCRIPT]
Episode Credits:
Producer: Lindsey Whissel Fenton
Audio Engineers: Mickey Klein, Scott Gros, Clint Yoder
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications. This program has been funded by the office of the Executive Vice President and Provost at Penn State and is part of the Penn State News Literacy Initiative.
