The 240-year-old Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is shutting down following a protracted labor battle and court rulings favoring its union.
The newspaper will print its final edition May 3, according to a statement it issued Wednesday hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied its request to stay a federal appeals court’s November order that the newspaper adhere to the terms of an earlier labor agreement with its union.
The Post-Gazette, the first newspaper published west of the Allegheny Mountains and one of the oldest in the United States, will join a long list of local newspapers that have closed in the past few decades. There were more than 7,300 newspapers in 2005 but fewer than 4,500 in 2025, according to a report from Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative.
Beyond the usual culprits — flagging advertising revenue, lagging subscription sales, changing reader habits in a digital age — the Post-Gazette was deeply burdened by its years-long labor battle.
“Recent court decisions would require the Post-Gazette to operate under a 2014 labor contract that imposes on the Post-Gazette outdated and inflexible operational practices unsuited for today’s local journalism,” the newspaper’s owner, Block Communications, wrote Wednesday.
Ending more than three years on strike, a group of 26 Post-Gazette journalists returned to work in late November after a federal appeals court in Philadelphia ordered the newspaper’s owners to restore a collectively bargained contract that guaranteed employees’ benefits including health care, paid time off and short-term disability.
The newspaper’s owners assailed that ruling, warning in a statement that “if allowed to stand, this decision will likely force the closure of the Post-Gazette.” After the Supreme Court’s order Wednesday, the Block family, the longtime owners of the newspaper, made good on that threat.
Union leaders excoriated the newspaper’s owners for shutting down the Post-Gazette.
“Instead of simply following the law, the owners chose to punish local journalists and the city of Pittsburgh,” said Andrew Goldstein, president of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.
Jon Schleuss, president of the national NewsGuild-CWA union, wrote in a statement: “The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Blocks spent millions on lawyers to fight union workers, fight journalists and break federal labor law. They lost at every level, including now at the Supreme Court.”
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