- Episode 408
Hollowing Out the Fourth Estate: Requiem for the Post-Gazette
Local newspapers have long played a central role in how communities understand themselves, but that role is becoming harder to sustain. In this episode of News Over Noise, Matt Jordan and Cory Barker talk with journalist Tony Norman about the unraveling of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and what its decline reveals about the broader transformation of American journalism. Drawing on more than three decades in the newsroom, Norman reflects on the loss of local reporting capacity, the erosion of editorial independence, and the structural pressures reshaping the industry. The conversation explores what happens when institutions built to hold power accountable lose the resources and vision to do so, and why the future of local news remains uncertain, contested, and critically important.
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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, you know, 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 on your arms and basically ask for an assignment or a job or freelance or something. And folks, for 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 at a, a very large newsroom. The competition against another newspaper, and how that sharpens you as a journalist. There were 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 on 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, 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 a whole, 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, I would say that, you know, when you 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 of my myopic. 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, I think that's you need competition in order to for democracy to thrive, too. So that's my cockamamie theory of the case.
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 thumb his nose. But it's not as say that 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 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, 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. You saw the firing of a popular political cartoonist, editorial cartoonists who was, you know, any day now is going to get a Pulitzer. Why would you get rid of someone who's 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, Pittsburgh, the failure to understand that whatever is happening out in Fayette County and Armstrong County and some of the more conservative places, Butler and whatever, and Pittsburgh were your bread and butter is still solidly blue and is 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 head to the pandemic and you head into, you know, the shutdown of American life, the natural conservatism, you know, 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, basically, you know, it wasn't through layoffs. It was just people decided the most talented people out, 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, if the paper decides to unilaterally not honor its contracts, its union contracts anymore, and or if they do something really stupid, I mean, as the circulation of major newspapers is falling off of a cliff, you know, and, and in the middle teens, you know, around 2014, 2015 and so forth, what do we do as a, as an institution? We go out and we build a printing plant, 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 that, as promised to the union, and you use it to build this, 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 their costs. Suddenly, you know, you built this plant and those customers, for whatever reason, decide, yeah, we're going to stick with our current printers. And your stuck with no customers is only you're doing fliers for supermarkets and printing your own paper, and sooner or later you run out of the resources to print your own paper because labor costs money. So, what do 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 the 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—
TONY NORMAN: Right, the storytellers, the folks who are out there looking for the stories that their folks find compelling, and they know their beats and they know you know, what real stories are, and they know how to convey it in a compelling way. I know I'm sounding redundant here, but there is. There is that 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. I mean, they really don't have much to do with the wealth creation of a newspaper in this case. 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 investing. 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. So, what do you what does one what does one say? What does one do about that? 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. You know, either a hedge fund, they'll come in or they'll be another independent owner, you know, another rich family, a mini-Bezos, or it will dissolve or if it's lucky, a nonprofit, we'll figure out a way to, to, to bring on some it bring back some of the talent to continue their beats or to bring in new, fresh blood, young reporters who don't have pension obligations and just sort of bring them in and 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: You said they can't fulfill the mission. 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 NORMAN: Oh, because we're, we're a city of con men and women, where a city of if there isn't any more 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, an old school, you know, 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, you know, those saws that explode. You know, like a rotten tooth that you ignore until you can anymore. And that happens everywhere. Pennsylvania as a state, you know, I just sort of like, is inclined towards that. I mean, we have the second biggest legislature in the country, I believe. Well, maybe it's third at this point; at one time was number one in terms of the just the sheer size. 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 that no one could take a fart in Harrisburg without us knowing about it. Now, everything that happens in Harrisburg, you know, unless some of the smaller independent, you know, like PA spotlight or someone you know, catches it, we don't catch it. And, Pennsylvania's crucial to the democratic survival of, of America. You know, when you look at when you look at the, the machinations that the Trump administration is, is putting into play when it comes to then, you know, the next vote, they have all these cronies, you know, there are all these right-wing cronies spread across the state. But, you know, and so many people of bad will in our legislature, that something horrible is bound to happen democratically, that attacks on our democracy and, and who will be there to sort of ring the alarm before it happens? See, 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, you know, 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, 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 that way, and 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 laughs is oh well, you know, it's all Apocalypse Now. Yeah. Not at all. But and 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 or was that because. Because one of the things we saw here in Centre County was that I don't know, about 15 years ago, just that stopped being a beat. And it was there something similar like that at the Post-Gazette?
TONY NORMAN: I think that was the late aughts, you know, 2011, 2012. It was no longer, a desirable beat because the resources had been cut back. And 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 teaming up on a Harrisburg story or, you know, making a hybrid beat to cover state and federal. It's just too much for one person, two persons.
MATT JORDAN: Right. Right.
TONY NORMAN: And so, when we lost, when we lost the sort of like, what are we here for? I mean, maybe we can cut back on something else. Maybe we don't need a sports desk that's 40 people. Maybe we can have a state capitol desk that is constantly three people. At the very least. And maybe we need two people in DC, you know, in order to cover what our senators and congressmen have to say.
CORY BARER: 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: Yeah.
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, either during that time or subsequently, you know, since you left the publication and now since this news has come out, I mean, can you give us a little bit more insight about just what it feels like to work at a place that, you know, has this sort of reputation and a lot of people working there know what it feels like to do great work and a great place and then to feel it, you know, slowly and then maybe more quickly erode and all of that kind of go away.
TONY NORMAN: Right. The folks who have been there for a long time 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 need, and we didn't realize how good we had. At once upon a time, we didn't realize that, 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 incentive incentivized to just sort of grow into a better writer and reporter and journalist 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. You know, we're the Post-Gazette. You know, we know how to get shit done and it doesn't reverse. And then things start to deteriorate. And then, you know, a lot of veterans begin to go, oh, I think I'll take a buyout. And, you know, the next thing you know, you know, the folks who have all the accumulated knowledge of, you know, that amount to centuries of expertise are walking out the door. And next thing you know, you got, you know, another group of people coming in who don't share that rich history, who maybe come from shittier places, who find the Post-Gazette to be, you know, Shangri-La. They're like, well, what are you people complaining about? This is great. You make decent money and this and that and so forth. But, you know, like a social contract has been broken. And we just hope that it doesn't lead to anything to crappy, you know, we hope we just assume we're going to be here 50 years from now. So, but 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 hackneyed and, you know, analogy, you know, like the frog boiling in water, 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 figure that's going to happen. It's like the farthest thing from your mind. And then and meanwhile. So, and all of a sudden, you know, there's a new, you know, raft of people coming in, younger people and you're trying to sort of like put your institution into context so that they can understand what it is they're coming into. And you, you, you fixate on happy days, and you just say, there was a time this and that, and you get wrapped up in nostalgia and they're like, yeah, whatever, boss. But you know, we're here to do a job and so forth. And, and for a while, that sort of youthful energy is enough to pull you forward. But then there's a different mentality there. Young people are not coming to stay forever like we did. You know, a young person who was confronted with an offer from a bigger and better place? Who doesn't have children or, you know, a spouse is going to take it in a second. So, you know, our most talented young people, people who are, you know, your ages, you know, like young folks took the deals, you know, when The Washington Post, you know, when Bezos bought The Washington Post and was offering large salaries and going on a hiring spree, I can't tell you how many Post-Gazette people he grabbed. But they were young people who had only been around for, you know, not even a year in some cases.
MATT JORDAN: Right.
TONY NORMAN: You know, he just took them. So, what could we say to entice those people to stay? Nothing. And so, there was just so like the institution began to feel more porous, like it wasn't like a destination spot anymore. It was just like a place you went to wait for the Wall Street Journal and, you know, The Washington Post to poach, you know, the most promising people and that and that happen. And so, there was like, an end to that spirit, that esprit de corps there was that began to just sort of like that disappeared.
MATT JORDAN: Yeah.
TONY NORMAN: And the most inspiring editors, the most inspiring writers began to leave. And that was again in the teens. And then 20 teens. And then when the Post-Gazette moved from the Boulevard of the Allies, and the city to the North Shore, by that time, the handwriting was on the wall. We moved from, admittedly a crappy building, but it was like a gigantic building that had so much history in it. It was just an amazing where our printing presses were. It was an amazing place to be, to hear the clanking of the printing presses all day, and the smell of the ink, which probably gave all of us cancer. Who the hell knows? And, and, and just the, the vitality, the industrial vitality that was there. There was a connection between our abstract words and its very tangible thing that came off of the rollers every day that went out to people's, you know, front porches and they took a took them into the house and opened them at the kitchen table and read what we had to say. You know, that was what it was all about. We were trying to make sense of what we were doing as the world moves on without us, we cannot figure out a strategy, like The New York Times later did, where basically they became one of my friends said The New York Times is a Wordle app that happens to have a bureau in Asia. You know, it's like, you know, it's a cooking app, you know, but they figured out how to survive to continue doing what they're doing, you know, as a news source, that is self-sufficient. There was a time when two thirds of New York Times was supported by advertising. Now two-thirds of it are supported by subscriptions.
MATT JORDAN: Right.
TONY NORMAN: And that's what we all want to get to, obviously. How do we get to that? It may be that this is only The New York Times can figure it out. The Washington Post is dying on the vine right now. It's the Wall Street Journal is surviving. Are we just going to have national newspapers? Who knows? I think we can. I think Pittsburgh is capable of producing both a local paper that has statewide importance and can continue to innovate on that front and be relevant to our readers. I think we have to think of ourselves as local and regional and then conquer that, and then eventually make ourselves integral tool to every, you know, our Harrisburg coverage has to, improve maybe even coverage of Philly, who knows. But and Harrisburg is the key. You know, Centre County is the key. All of these places are, you know, that otherwise will go on. Uncovered are the key.
MATT JORDAN: Right. You describe kind of the old folks in the in the newsroom versus the new folks. And it sounds like from your piece that there were some new people who came in and tried to kind of catch up with time in a way.
TONY NORMAN: Yes.
MATT JORDAN: In fact, you give a nice shout out to our Bellisario colleague here, Mila Sanina, who was your editor for a while.
TONY NORMAN: Oh, yes.
MATT JORDAN: What were some of the things that Mila was trying to do in terms of updating the delivery of the of the material?
TONY NORMAN: Mila was just a visionary. Every day she came in with ideas, and she said that if we want to be a part of the conversation, we have to gear our stories towards the online space. You know, we can't think of ourselves as strictly a printed product that, you know, happens to also be distributed online. She wanted us to think about online first, and that was a profound paradigm shift for the people she worked with, for her immediate colleagues. I mean, Nina, Mila was a, I mean, I was a little fish, you know, I, you know, I was just, you know, a writer and so forth. Mila was an editor, and she was in the meetings with all of these folks who had no idea what she was talking about. They had no idea about the, the, the, the, the technological implications of a journalism that originates online. They had no idea of what any of that meant. And so, she's banging her head against the wall, you know, trying to get folks to see why a change in direction was, was necessary. I'm not quite sure how long she was there. Maybe it was four years, five years, maybe a little longer. But I can tell you that every day she came in. You know what? Just determined to just get us just a little bit further down the road, you know, towards modernity. And it was not always appreciated. So, the fact that Mila was young and very well versed in the language of, of new media as opposed to old media, she was not trying to make it easy for the old folks to make that transition, which is that we have to move now, there's an emergency. Now we have to do this. Look at what this paper is doing over here, like The New York Times or over there and so forth. We have to adapt some of these ways, you know. But she was not like, move fast and break things person, she was a move fast, deliberate. While you're moving fast. But understand, you have no choice but to move fast. And while you're moving fast, get used to the idea that you're going to have to move faster if you want to survive. And she was basically saying that at a time when people were like yeah, we'll build a printing plant.
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, if we want to use that kind of neutral term over the last 25 years. But I'm curious in, in your perspective, what is more specific or unique in this case to this particular institution that, you know, makes it different from just the standard decline of print? You know, people using the internet and then their phones to get news, declining ad revenue. All of those things are legitimate.
TONY NORMAN: Right.
CORY BARKER: And, and part of this story. But, I mean, maybe beyond deciding to build a state-of-the-art printing press in like 2015, 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 less, 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. Let's use Mila as an example. You know, it's almost like she came out of nowhere speaking, you know, a language that no one knew. But she was absolutely right at every turn. It was just no system. At the Post-Gazette to reinforce her points or her vision, or there was no natural allies ship amongst the, either the, the, the owners of the paper or the managers of the paper or the traditions of the paper. It was unprecedented. And I think every decision that was made by an out of touch leadership just compounded our situation. 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 it was one of those Gordian knots, you know, you couldn't figure out how to get out of this situation. And I don't think and that's not any different. I mean, every newspaper has its own sort of, you know, every, you know, the to quote Tolstoy or paraphrase Tolstoy, you know, you know, every family is, you know, you know, has this problem that has its own problems in its own way. You know, every newspaper has its own problems 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 prisons of the Western Pennsylvania experience what Mila and people like her were trying to do was to get us, the Post-Gazette leadership, to get out of its bubbles, and owners to get out of their bubbles and, and, allow just a couple years of experimentation. You know, to hit upon something that might work. There was like, nothing to lose. If we did something new that would get us the right kind of attention and devotion and love from the potential customers in western Pennsylvania for our products. 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, two guys, you know, John and Allan Block, who had no idea 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, and thank God for what they gave us. And so, I think that was the biggest problem. I mean, cleverer people than me can probably look for, you know, find other the things. I just, I think the problem was just, you know, the leadership.
MATT JORDAN: Just to start wrapping us up a little bit. What 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 or and for example, what 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. There's talk now of, this is business, 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, and he and he's leading a group of businessmen. And as we know, the problem with businessmen is that sometimes they have interests that are in conflict with 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. You know, we could do a car dealership exposé every damn week. I never run out of folks to write about. But, I mean, for I believe. And it might be totally naive. I might be totally naive, but some of these efforts, there are 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 still in the game. They're going to come back. No doubt. There's going to be I think you're going to see, migration to Substack by a lot of really talented people who might sort of aggregate on Substack and to make, you know, like to sort of like be a, a Justice League, as it were. Right, 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. I swear I'm not dodging the question, but I just I mean, I don't know what's going to happen.
MATT JORDAN: Right.
TONY NORMAN: 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. People will… 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, you know, someone's going to step up. It may be half-assed at first, and then someone's going to see their example and improve upon it. And before you know, it, you know, as long as it's not printed, as long as someone is stupid enough to want to go by the Post Gazette's printing press, you know, it's going to result in something really, really beautiful and fascinating 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.
CORY BARKER: Well, Matt, a lot of great personal reflections from Tony. Some positive on his time at the PPG, some obviously not so positive given where we are now with its, impending closing in May. What's your primary takeaway from our chat with him?
MATT JORDAN: I kept hearing this tug and pull and what he was saying in terms of the viability of the news ecosystems. Right. That what happened, The New York Times, what happened in The Washington Post? What happened to The Wall Street Journal as their local readership dried up, was that they tried to scale and go national, and that seems like that was also part of the attempt of the Post-Gazette to save itself as the kind of digital moment to emerge. But it strikes me that that is, in essence, this conundrum that our local news finds itself in, where at the very same time that you're trying to make what is great about the local context, right. Your beat reporters who know, understand who the people are, what the issues are, and then how do you scale that to a national audience and without de neutering it or neutering it of its importance? Right. So, I think this is one of the challenges of local news, especially when you have owners coming in who don't live there, who aren't invested in the community, but who want to scale this, what seems to be lost. There is precisely that local context that allows that community to kind of travel through time together. So that's kind of what popped up for me. What about you?
CORY BARKER: You know, the thing that I kept thinking about during this chat with Tony is that it's really hard to be positive, despite his inherent positivity about what could come in the aftermath of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. I, I, I sense the kind of optimism that I've read from people so many different times when smaller publications in smaller cities have closed. And I guess I'm just really scared not by anything that Tony said specifically, but just by the sense that, like all of these really bad disaster scenarios that we've seen in the news industry happening in smaller places, but then slightly bigger and now slightly bigger and slightly bigger are now reaching places like Pittsburgh. Right. And in that whole kind of western Pennsylvania area where, you know, what we imagine even to be a news desert in 2026 is going to be redefined by the end of this decade in a way that I'm sure there will continue to be great individual reporting in nonprofits and people coming together on Substack. It just feels like it's so difficult to be able to get over the hump of that scale problem, right, that we're talking about today and we talk about so often. And so, I do love the optimism, but I'm also in the back of my head thinking, like I've heard this before from a lot of people who are working in smaller communities, and now that's just coming to other people's doors who never thought it would happen to them. Right?
MATT JORDAN: Right. And I guess what you have to hope will happen is that the reasons that people are optimistic, which is, I think from him, it's like his optimism comes from his read of the community that, you know, nature abhors a vacuum. Something will come into that vacuum to give that community what it needs. So, it's important for all of us to invest ourselves in that community. And that can part of that can be buying a local newspaper or when you have one, you know, and all of those things are what can I think the cycle of opposite or the virtuous circle wheel of optimism. So yeah, that, that that's a, that's a, it's a, it's a conundrum. That’s it for this episode of News Over Noise. Our guest was journalist Tony Norman. To learn more, visit news-over-noise-dot-org. I’m Matt Jordan.
CORY BARKER: And I’m Cory Barker.
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.
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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, you know, 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 on your arms and basically ask for an assignment or a job or freelance or something. And folks, for 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 at a, a very large newsroom. The competition against another newspaper, and how that sharpens you as a journalist. There were 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 on 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, 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 a whole, 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, I would say that, you know, when you 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 of my myopic. 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, I think that's you need competition in order to for democracy to thrive, too. So that's my cockamamie theory of the case.
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 thumb his nose. But it's not as say that 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 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, 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. You saw the firing of a popular political cartoonist, editorial cartoonists who was, you know, any day now is going to get a Pulitzer. Why would you get rid of someone who's 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, Pittsburgh, the failure to understand that whatever is happening out in Fayette County and Armstrong County and some of the more conservative places, Butler and whatever, and Pittsburgh were your bread and butter is still solidly blue and is 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 head to the pandemic and you head into, you know, the shutdown of American life, the natural conservatism, you know, 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, basically, you know, it wasn't through layoffs. It was just people decided the most talented people out, 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, if the paper decides to unilaterally not honor its contracts, its union contracts anymore, and or if they do something really stupid, I mean, as the circulation of major newspapers is falling off of a cliff, you know, and, and in the middle teens, you know, around 2014, 2015 and so forth, what do we do as a, as an institution? We go out and we build a printing plant, 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 that, as promised to the union, and you use it to build this, 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 their costs. Suddenly, you know, you built this plant and those customers, for whatever reason, decide, yeah, we're going to stick with our current printers. And your stuck with no customers is only you're doing fliers for supermarkets and printing your own paper, and sooner or later you run out of the resources to print your own paper because labor costs money. So, what do 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 the 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—
TONY NORMAN: Right, the storytellers, the folks who are out there looking for the stories that their folks find compelling, and they know their beats and they know you know, what real stories are, and they know how to convey it in a compelling way. I know I'm sounding redundant here, but there is. There is that 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. I mean, they really don't have much to do with the wealth creation of a newspaper in this case. 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 investing. 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. So, what do you what does one what does one say? What does one do about that? 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. You know, either a hedge fund, they'll come in or they'll be another independent owner, you know, another rich family, a mini-Bezos, or it will dissolve or if it's lucky, a nonprofit, we'll figure out a way to, to, to bring on some it bring back some of the talent to continue their beats or to bring in new, fresh blood, young reporters who don't have pension obligations and just sort of bring them in and 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: You said they can't fulfill the mission. 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 NORMAN: Oh, because we're, we're a city of con men and women, where a city of if there isn't any more 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, an old school, you know, 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, you know, those saws that explode. You know, like a rotten tooth that you ignore until you can anymore. And that happens everywhere. Pennsylvania as a state, you know, I just sort of like, is inclined towards that. I mean, we have the second biggest legislature in the country, I believe. Well, maybe it's third at this point; at one time was number one in terms of the just the sheer size. 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 that no one could take a fart in Harrisburg without us knowing about it. Now, everything that happens in Harrisburg, you know, unless some of the smaller independent, you know, like PA spotlight or someone you know, catches it, we don't catch it. And, Pennsylvania's crucial to the democratic survival of, of America. You know, when you look at when you look at the, the machinations that the Trump administration is, is putting into play when it comes to then, you know, the next vote, they have all these cronies, you know, there are all these right-wing cronies spread across the state. But, you know, and so many people of bad will in our legislature, that something horrible is bound to happen democratically, that attacks on our democracy and, and who will be there to sort of ring the alarm before it happens? See, 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, you know, 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, 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 that way, and 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 laughs is oh well, you know, it's all Apocalypse Now. Yeah. Not at all. But and 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 or was that because. Because one of the things we saw here in Centre County was that I don't know, about 15 years ago, just that stopped being a beat. And it was there something similar like that at the Post-Gazette?
TONY NORMAN: I think that was the late aughts, you know, 2011, 2012. It was no longer, a desirable beat because the resources had been cut back. And 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 teaming up on a Harrisburg story or, you know, making a hybrid beat to cover state and federal. It's just too much for one person, two persons.
MATT JORDAN: Right. Right.
TONY NORMAN: And so, when we lost, when we lost the sort of like, what are we here for? I mean, maybe we can cut back on something else. Maybe we don't need a sports desk that's 40 people. Maybe we can have a state capitol desk that is constantly three people. At the very least. And maybe we need two people in DC, you know, in order to cover what our senators and congressmen have to say.
CORY BARER: 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: Yeah.
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, either during that time or subsequently, you know, since you left the publication and now since this news has come out, I mean, can you give us a little bit more insight about just what it feels like to work at a place that, you know, has this sort of reputation and a lot of people working there know what it feels like to do great work and a great place and then to feel it, you know, slowly and then maybe more quickly erode and all of that kind of go away.
TONY NORMAN: Right. The folks who have been there for a long time 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 need, and we didn't realize how good we had. At once upon a time, we didn't realize that, 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 incentive incentivized to just sort of grow into a better writer and reporter and journalist 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. You know, we're the Post-Gazette. You know, we know how to get shit done and it doesn't reverse. And then things start to deteriorate. And then, you know, a lot of veterans begin to go, oh, I think I'll take a buyout. And, you know, the next thing you know, you know, the folks who have all the accumulated knowledge of, you know, that amount to centuries of expertise are walking out the door. And next thing you know, you got, you know, another group of people coming in who don't share that rich history, who maybe come from shittier places, who find the Post-Gazette to be, you know, Shangri-La. They're like, well, what are you people complaining about? This is great. You make decent money and this and that and so forth. But, you know, like a social contract has been broken. And we just hope that it doesn't lead to anything to crappy, you know, we hope we just assume we're going to be here 50 years from now. So, but 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 hackneyed and, you know, analogy, you know, like the frog boiling in water, 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 figure that's going to happen. It's like the farthest thing from your mind. And then and meanwhile. So, and all of a sudden, you know, there's a new, you know, raft of people coming in, younger people and you're trying to sort of like put your institution into context so that they can understand what it is they're coming into. And you, you, you fixate on happy days, and you just say, there was a time this and that, and you get wrapped up in nostalgia and they're like, yeah, whatever, boss. But you know, we're here to do a job and so forth. And, and for a while, that sort of youthful energy is enough to pull you forward. But then there's a different mentality there. Young people are not coming to stay forever like we did. You know, a young person who was confronted with an offer from a bigger and better place? Who doesn't have children or, you know, a spouse is going to take it in a second. So, you know, our most talented young people, people who are, you know, your ages, you know, like young folks took the deals, you know, when The Washington Post, you know, when Bezos bought The Washington Post and was offering large salaries and going on a hiring spree, I can't tell you how many Post-Gazette people he grabbed. But they were young people who had only been around for, you know, not even a year in some cases.
MATT JORDAN: Right.
TONY NORMAN: You know, he just took them. So, what could we say to entice those people to stay? Nothing. And so, there was just so like the institution began to feel more porous, like it wasn't like a destination spot anymore. It was just like a place you went to wait for the Wall Street Journal and, you know, The Washington Post to poach, you know, the most promising people and that and that happen. And so, there was like, an end to that spirit, that esprit de corps there was that began to just sort of like that disappeared.
MATT JORDAN: Yeah.
TONY NORMAN: And the most inspiring editors, the most inspiring writers began to leave. And that was again in the teens. And then 20 teens. And then when the Post-Gazette moved from the Boulevard of the Allies, and the city to the North Shore, by that time, the handwriting was on the wall. We moved from, admittedly a crappy building, but it was like a gigantic building that had so much history in it. It was just an amazing where our printing presses were. It was an amazing place to be, to hear the clanking of the printing presses all day, and the smell of the ink, which probably gave all of us cancer. Who the hell knows? And, and, and just the, the vitality, the industrial vitality that was there. There was a connection between our abstract words and its very tangible thing that came off of the rollers every day that went out to people's, you know, front porches and they took a took them into the house and opened them at the kitchen table and read what we had to say. You know, that was what it was all about. We were trying to make sense of what we were doing as the world moves on without us, we cannot figure out a strategy, like The New York Times later did, where basically they became one of my friends said The New York Times is a Wordle app that happens to have a bureau in Asia. You know, it's like, you know, it's a cooking app, you know, but they figured out how to survive to continue doing what they're doing, you know, as a news source, that is self-sufficient. There was a time when two thirds of New York Times was supported by advertising. Now two-thirds of it are supported by subscriptions.
MATT JORDAN: Right.
TONY NORMAN: And that's what we all want to get to, obviously. How do we get to that? It may be that this is only The New York Times can figure it out. The Washington Post is dying on the vine right now. It's the Wall Street Journal is surviving. Are we just going to have national newspapers? Who knows? I think we can. I think Pittsburgh is capable of producing both a local paper that has statewide importance and can continue to innovate on that front and be relevant to our readers. I think we have to think of ourselves as local and regional and then conquer that, and then eventually make ourselves integral tool to every, you know, our Harrisburg coverage has to, improve maybe even coverage of Philly, who knows. But and Harrisburg is the key. You know, Centre County is the key. All of these places are, you know, that otherwise will go on. Uncovered are the key.
MATT JORDAN: Right. You describe kind of the old folks in the in the newsroom versus the new folks. And it sounds like from your piece that there were some new people who came in and tried to kind of catch up with time in a way.
TONY NORMAN: Yes.
MATT JORDAN: In fact, you give a nice shout out to our Bellisario colleague here, Mila Sanina, who was your editor for a while.
TONY NORMAN: Oh, yes.
MATT JORDAN: What were some of the things that Mila was trying to do in terms of updating the delivery of the of the material?
TONY NORMAN: Mila was just a visionary. Every day she came in with ideas, and she said that if we want to be a part of the conversation, we have to gear our stories towards the online space. You know, we can't think of ourselves as strictly a printed product that, you know, happens to also be distributed online. She wanted us to think about online first, and that was a profound paradigm shift for the people she worked with, for her immediate colleagues. I mean, Nina, Mila was a, I mean, I was a little fish, you know, I, you know, I was just, you know, a writer and so forth. Mila was an editor, and she was in the meetings with all of these folks who had no idea what she was talking about. They had no idea about the, the, the, the, the technological implications of a journalism that originates online. They had no idea of what any of that meant. And so, she's banging her head against the wall, you know, trying to get folks to see why a change in direction was, was necessary. I'm not quite sure how long she was there. Maybe it was four years, five years, maybe a little longer. But I can tell you that every day she came in. You know what? Just determined to just get us just a little bit further down the road, you know, towards modernity. And it was not always appreciated. So, the fact that Mila was young and very well versed in the language of, of new media as opposed to old media, she was not trying to make it easy for the old folks to make that transition, which is that we have to move now, there's an emergency. Now we have to do this. Look at what this paper is doing over here, like The New York Times or over there and so forth. We have to adapt some of these ways, you know. But she was not like, move fast and break things person, she was a move fast, deliberate. While you're moving fast. But understand, you have no choice but to move fast. And while you're moving fast, get used to the idea that you're going to have to move faster if you want to survive. And she was basically saying that at a time when people were like yeah, we'll build a printing plant.
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, if we want to use that kind of neutral term over the last 25 years. But I'm curious in, in your perspective, what is more specific or unique in this case to this particular institution that, you know, makes it different from just the standard decline of print? You know, people using the internet and then their phones to get news, declining ad revenue. All of those things are legitimate.
TONY NORMAN: Right.
CORY BARKER: And, and part of this story. But, I mean, maybe beyond deciding to build a state-of-the-art printing press in like 2015, 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 less, 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. Let's use Mila as an example. You know, it's almost like she came out of nowhere speaking, you know, a language that no one knew. But she was absolutely right at every turn. It was just no system. At the Post-Gazette to reinforce her points or her vision, or there was no natural allies ship amongst the, either the, the, the owners of the paper or the managers of the paper or the traditions of the paper. It was unprecedented. And I think every decision that was made by an out of touch leadership just compounded our situation. 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 it was one of those Gordian knots, you know, you couldn't figure out how to get out of this situation. And I don't think and that's not any different. I mean, every newspaper has its own sort of, you know, every, you know, the to quote Tolstoy or paraphrase Tolstoy, you know, you know, every family is, you know, you know, has this problem that has its own problems in its own way. You know, every newspaper has its own problems 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 prisons of the Western Pennsylvania experience what Mila and people like her were trying to do was to get us, the Post-Gazette leadership, to get out of its bubbles, and owners to get out of their bubbles and, and, allow just a couple years of experimentation. You know, to hit upon something that might work. There was like, nothing to lose. If we did something new that would get us the right kind of attention and devotion and love from the potential customers in western Pennsylvania for our products. 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, two guys, you know, John and Allan Block, who had no idea 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, and thank God for what they gave us. And so, I think that was the biggest problem. I mean, cleverer people than me can probably look for, you know, find other the things. I just, I think the problem was just, you know, the leadership.
MATT JORDAN: Just to start wrapping us up a little bit. What 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 or and for example, what 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. There's talk now of, this is business, 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, and he and he's leading a group of businessmen. And as we know, the problem with businessmen is that sometimes they have interests that are in conflict with 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. You know, we could do a car dealership exposé every damn week. I never run out of folks to write about. But, I mean, for I believe. And it might be totally naive. I might be totally naive, but some of these efforts, there are 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 still in the game. They're going to come back. No doubt. There's going to be I think you're going to see, migration to Substack by a lot of really talented people who might sort of aggregate on Substack and to make, you know, like to sort of like be a, a Justice League, as it were. Right, 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. I swear I'm not dodging the question, but I just I mean, I don't know what's going to happen.
MATT JORDAN: Right.
TONY NORMAN: 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. People will… 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, you know, someone's going to step up. It may be half-assed at first, and then someone's going to see their example and improve upon it. And before you know, it, you know, as long as it's not printed, as long as someone is stupid enough to want to go by the Post Gazette's printing press, you know, it's going to result in something really, really beautiful and fascinating 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.
CORY BARKER: Well, Matt, a lot of great personal reflections from Tony. Some positive on his time at the PPG, some obviously not so positive given where we are now with its, impending closing in May. What's your primary takeaway from our chat with him?
MATT JORDAN: I kept hearing this tug and pull and what he was saying in terms of the viability of the news ecosystems. Right. That what happened, The New York Times, what happened in The Washington Post? What happened to The Wall Street Journal as their local readership dried up, was that they tried to scale and go national, and that seems like that was also part of the attempt of the Post-Gazette to save itself as the kind of digital moment to emerge. But it strikes me that that is, in essence, this conundrum that our local news finds itself in, where at the very same time that you're trying to make what is great about the local context, right. Your beat reporters who know, understand who the people are, what the issues are, and then how do you scale that to a national audience and without de neutering it or neutering it of its importance? Right. So, I think this is one of the challenges of local news, especially when you have owners coming in who don't live there, who aren't invested in the community, but who want to scale this, what seems to be lost. There is precisely that local context that allows that community to kind of travel through time together. So that's kind of what popped up for me. What about you?
CORY BARKER: You know, the thing that I kept thinking about during this chat with Tony is that it's really hard to be positive, despite his inherent positivity about what could come in the aftermath of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. I, I, I sense the kind of optimism that I've read from people so many different times when smaller publications in smaller cities have closed. And I guess I'm just really scared not by anything that Tony said specifically, but just by the sense that, like all of these really bad disaster scenarios that we've seen in the news industry happening in smaller places, but then slightly bigger and now slightly bigger and slightly bigger are now reaching places like Pittsburgh. Right. And in that whole kind of western Pennsylvania area where, you know, what we imagine even to be a news desert in 2026 is going to be redefined by the end of this decade in a way that I'm sure there will continue to be great individual reporting in nonprofits and people coming together on Substack. It just feels like it's so difficult to be able to get over the hump of that scale problem, right, that we're talking about today and we talk about so often. And so, I do love the optimism, but I'm also in the back of my head thinking, like I've heard this before from a lot of people who are working in smaller communities, and now that's just coming to other people's doors who never thought it would happen to them. Right?
MATT JORDAN: Right. And I guess what you have to hope will happen is that the reasons that people are optimistic, which is, I think from him, it's like his optimism comes from his read of the community that, you know, nature abhors a vacuum. Something will come into that vacuum to give that community what it needs. So, it's important for all of us to invest ourselves in that community. And that can part of that can be buying a local newspaper or when you have one, you know, and all of those things are what can I think the cycle of opposite or the virtuous circle wheel of optimism. So yeah, that, that that's a, that's a, it's a, it's a conundrum. That’s it for this episode of News Over Noise. Our guest was journalist Tony Norman. To learn more, visit news-over-noise-dot-org. I’m Matt Jordan.
CORY BARKER: And I’m Cory Barker.
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.
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About our 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.
Read Tony's essay, "Requiem for the Post-Gazette."