The biggest newspaper in town is the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. That made the paper into the only real reason that the
Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh existed. This parasitic relationship ended when the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette shut down over the demands of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.
The owners of the Post-Gazette had warned that the paper would have to shut down if the union didn’t stop making unreasonable demands. The union however went right on doing its thing and then it found out who John Galt is the hard way.
The Block family, which owns the paper, stated that they’ve lost $350 million over the last 20 years of trying to keep it afloat.
And it’s not as if the union couldn’t have seen it coming. The Pittsburgh Press, the second largest newspaper in the city, was sold to the Block family in 1992 which consolidated its operations into the Post-Gazette.
Despite that the Newspaper Guilt spent 4 years using the Biden administration to pressure the Blocks into giving in to the union. Biden’s out, the National Labor Relations Board no longer functions like a domestic terrorist group, and the Blocks are exiting the newspaper business.
Who’s hurt by this? The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh has destroyed not one, but two papers. Calling in media allies to go after the Block brothers (descendants of the original Block, a Jewish immigrant kid who started out with nothing and became pals with Hearst) and harassing them at their home and accusing them of being Trump supporters, didn’t force them to back down.
It led them to shut down the paper.
Now the Newspaper Guild can focus on destroying the remaining newspapers in the area. Because that’s all media unions seem to be good for anymore.
