The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which dates its ancestry to 1786 as the first newspaper to open west of the Allegheny Mountains, faced a critical juncture. Its closure would have left Pittsburgh as the nation's largest community without a city-based paper, according to multiple reports. Under the new ownership, the newspaper will continue to print on two days, Thursday and Sunday, and will operate a website on the other days.
The financial terms of the sale were not disclosed. This rescue follows a growing trend of nonprofit conversions in local journalism. The Salt Lake Tribune was the first legacy newspaper in the country to directly convert from a for-profit company to a nonprofit in 2019, a move that required IRS approval.
As part of its switch, the Tribune installed a board of directors, began relying on donations, and set up a strict firewall between reporters and donors to prevent influence from tainting the news report. S. Department of Justice probe.
Utah businessman Paul Huntsman bought the Tribune in 2016 and ushered in its nonprofit conversion. Another major example is the Chicago Sun-Times, which was bought by Chicago Public Media in 2022, creating one of the country's largest local nonprofit news organizations. Chicago Public Media already owned WBEZ, the local NPR affiliate, and after the acquisition, the radio station and newspaper began sharing content across their platforms.