PITTSBURGH — The owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced Wednesday that the paper will close within a few months, citing financial losses.
Block Communications Inc. announced It will cease publication on May 3. The newspaper is printed on Thursdays and Sundays and says on its website: Average Paid Trading It is 83000.
Dozens of union members returned to work at the Post-Gazette in November after a three-year strike.
More than five years ago, the newspaper announced it had reached a bargaining deadlock with the Pittsburgh newspaper union and unilaterally imposed terms and conditions of employment on those workers. It was later found that the newspaper had negotiated in bad faith by making offers that were not intended to help reach an agreement and by prematurely announcing the impasse.
The announcement of Block’s closure came on the same day The US Supreme Court refused Emergency appeal launched by PG Publishing Co. Inc. To stop a National Labor Relations Board order that forced her to honor health care coverage policies in an expired union contract.
Andrew Goldstein, president of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, said the newspaper’s journalists have a long history of award-winning work.
“Rather than simply follow the law, the site owners chose to punish local journalists and the city of Pittsburgh,” Goldstein said. The union said employees were notified in a Zoom video in which company officials did not speak live.
The Post-Gazette said Block Communications lost hundreds of millions of dollars over two decades operating the newspaper, and the company said it considered “continued cash losses on this scale no longer sustainable.”
The Block family said in a statement that they are “proud of the service the Post-Gazette has provided to Pittsburgh for nearly a century.”
A phone message seeking comment was left Wednesday at Block Communications’ headquarters in Toledo, Ohio.
The newspaper’s roots go back to 1786, when the Pittsburgh Gazette began publishing a four-page weekly newspaper, and became a leading abolitionist of the 19th century. It went through a series of mastheads and owners before 1927, when Paul Block acquired the newspaper and renamed it the Post-Gazette.