When the owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced earlier this year that the paper would shut down in May, it was widely noted that such a move would leave Pittsburgh as the largest city in the country without a daily newspaper. That said, it seemed unlikely. The very fact that the Block family decided to keep operating the paper until May all but guaranteed that some new ownership possibilities would emerge.
And today, that’s exactly what happened. The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which owns the nonprofit Baltimore Banner, will buy the Post-Gazette and operate the paper as a nonprofit. If I’m not mistaken, that will make the Post-Gazette the second metro daily to go the nonprofit route, following The Salt Lake Tribune. A few other large regional dailies, most notably The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Tampa Bay Times, are for-profits owned by nonprofits.
The Venetoulis Institute was established by Baltimore billionaire Stewart Bainum as his vehicle for launching The Baltimore Banner, a digital-only news organization that he started after he was spurned in his attempts to buy The Baltimore Sun. The Banner has grown into one of the most admired news outlets in the country, and it recently announced it would expand its coverage area and sports reporting in response to massive cuts at The Washington Post. Ted Venetoulis was a friend of Bainum’s and an advocate for local news in Baltimore.
The Post-Gazette has been riven in recent years by a long-running battle between management and the union as well as racial turmoil, so its acquisition by a public-minded institution like Venetoulis is good news indeed.
“Venetoulis is committed to solving a national problem, to providing high-quality local journalism where it’s most needed,” Venetoulis CEO Bob Cohn was quoted as telling the Banner. “That is our civic mission. And here is an opportunity to do that in a market where the 240-year-old incumbent is going out of business or could be sold.”
In an interview with The New York Times, Bainum said, “The Block family should be recognized for selling this at a huge discount for the price they could have received.”
The change will also lead to the return of former Post-Gazette executive editor David Shribman, whose previous stops include a Pulitzer Prize-winning stint as Washington bureau chief for The Boston Globe. Shribman, who was the Post-Gazette’s top editor from 2003 to 2019, will served on the Venetoulis board.
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Excellent news!
Why was Stewart Bainum, who eventually produced The Banner, “one of the most admired news outlets in the country,” initially spurned in his attempt to purchase the Baltimore Sun? He evidently had the money, so is the reason that he was interested in good journalism, which was anathema to the Sun’s owners? It just seems quite odd.
I wrote many posts about that when it was unfolding. I’d start with this one.
The Post-Gazette is the first daily newspaper I read as a child in western Pennsylvania. Glad to see Shribman return.