Kaitlyn Hughes & Eliyahu Gasson & Naomi Girson | news editor & editor-in-chief & opinions editor

Steve Mellon, a photographer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was on his way back from an assignment at the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank on Wednesday when he got an alert about a newspaper-wide Zoom meeting at 1:15 p.m.

The message came just hours after the Post-Gazette’s publisher failed to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to halt a lower court order that required the company to make changes to health insurance coverage for unionized employees, according to Bloomberg Law.

“It did not seem to me to be good news,” Mellon said.

Block Communications Inc., the company that has owned the newspaper since 1927, announced on Wednesday that the Post-Gazette will cease operations on May 3. This comes after their other Pittsburgh-owned publication, Pittsburgh City Paper, announced its shutdown a week ago.

“Over the past 20 years, Block Communications has lost more than $350 million in cash operating the Post-Gazette,” a statement from the company said. “Despite those efforts, the realities facing local journalism make continued cash losses at this scale no longer sustainable.”

Block Communications Inc. did not respond to a request for comment.

Mellon, who has worked for the newspaper since 1997, was at the forefront of a three-year long strike, and finally returned to the newsroom in November.

A decision by three judges on the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the striking journalists on Nov. 10. The decision said that the Post-Gazette bargained in bad faith while negotiating a new contract. At the time, the Post-Gazette said it would appeal this decision.

The U.S. Supreme Court justice rejected a request on Wednesday to freeze a temporary injunction issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit more than nine months ago, according to the court docket. They vacated Justice Samuel Alito’s Dec. 22 order that paused the appeals court’s injunction.

“Recent court decisions would require the Post-Gazette to operate under a 2014 labor contract that imposed on the Post-Gazette outdated and inflexible operational practices unsuited for today’s local journalism,” the statement from the Post-Gazette said.

After three years of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow union members, Mellon said his heart breaks for them.

“Their reward for doing the right thing is that the company is closing the doors,” he said. “That’s a morale failure.”

Hallie Lauer, a Duquesne alumna and the City Hall reporter for the Post-Gazette, has been working for the newspaper since 2020. She was filled with a range of emotions after the announcement — shock, anger, sadness and confusion.

“It’s such a loss for Pittsburgh,” she said. “To lose a trusted news source … It’s going to cause irrevocable harm.”

As a young reporter and adviser to aspiring journalists at The Pitt News, Lauer is worried for the future of the profession.

“It’s one of those moments where I’m personally having a hard time finding optimism,” she said.

Julian Routh, a Duquesne alumnus and former employee of the Post-Gazette, had admired the publication for as long as he could remember.

“When I was at Duquesne, it was my dream to work there, and everything I did was to be able to work for the paper that I got as a kid from my dad in the driveway,” Routh said.

Mike Dillon, a journalism professor at Duquesne, said that the closing of the Post-Gazette is not a good sign for someone who wants to get into journalism.

But he thinks the current generation of reporters that he is teaching will be able to shape the field of journalism to fit the current state of media.

He said that the students he taught who lost their jobs in the field are some of the most talented, hardworking people he knows.

“It’s a loss to them and a loss to the community,” Dillon said.

Andrew Conte, president of the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania and director for the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University, said there’s still hope for Pittsburgh journalism.

“I would say we’ve got to remember that there are a lot of media outlets in this region that are still here,” he said.

Conte pointed out that there are more than 30 news outlets producing for the Pittsburgh Media Partnership. There are also national publications like Axios and The Conversation that have opened offices in Pittsburgh to report local news.

“For young journalists, this signals a change. I would say there are still opportunities but the opportunities are different,” he said.

Conte said now more than ever it’s up to journalists to make their own opportunities.

“This is a time when young journalists and people like myself who work with young journalists have the responsibility to figure out what the present and future of local news looks like and how to do that in a way that creates opportunities,” he said.

Kaitlyn Hughes can be reached at hughesk10@duq.edu. Eliyahu Gasson can be reached at gassone@duq.edu. Naomi Girson can be reached at girson@duq.edu