With the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s (PG) potential closure looming in less than three months and Pittsburgh City Paper already having closed, The Globe has found itself in an interesting predicament.
As of now, we are the only newspaper left in downtown Pittsburgh. We are the only outlet covering stories almost exclusively here, which will only become more true once the PG shutters.
With this, questions have been raised about what The Globe’s role should be Downtown. We are acutely aware of the opportunity which has been given to us to fulfill a potential news void in the area.
And we believe it should happen. Downtown is an important area, whether you live here, commute to campus or spend time beyond classes exploring the golden triangle. Not having any news dedicated to covering the place we are centered in seems unwise at best and short-sighted at worst.
But what will this look like? Will we expand our coverage area? Try to add more staff to make our newspaper as big as it once was at around 16 pages?
We can’t guarantee any of that. In fact, The Globe met with staff from U-View and WPPJ on Friday to discuss what our roles should look like with this opportunity in a discussion started by the Center for Civic & Community Engagement.
In this discussion, much of the talk centered around potentially starting a new, fourth media outlet to focus on stories in Downtown and to treat it as something higher level than student media. The Globe fundamentally disagrees with the creation of another Point Park media outlet.
Student media is not low-level even while it is a learning lab. This is where contributors make mistakes and learn from them, but this is also where high quality, award-winning work is published. To say that student media as a whole should be something to graduate from and then move onto a university-sponsored outlet is an insult to our work.
Point Park’s media landscape is already fragmented as it is. We need to think of student media as a place for collaboration and not something to split up further. Additionally, with our workloads, creating a fourth media outlet or creating something which oversees all student media almost like a head editing team is not what’s necessary or needed.
If the university were to say it could take the role of head editors, this would erode all editorial independence in student media. We should not and will not be reduced to PR fluff.
But in light of this, we’ve instead taken the opportunity to start our own city section instead of creating a new, unnecessary outlet and also negated the need for an outside group overseeing student media.
For example, The Daily Tar Heel, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s student newspaper (and one of the better examples of student news done right) has separate sections for news relating to happenings on-campus and off-campus throughout the rest of the city. Chances are, we may try something similar.
Let’s make one thing as clear as possible, though: we will not impede on our mission to be Point Park’s newspaper first and Downtown’s newspaper second. The Globe does not exist to report on the same things the Tribune-Review does —who would want to read something they can likely read somewhere else? The Globe’s content generally can’t be found elsewhere.
And this is how it should be. If there is any notion that The Globe will ease its watchful eye on the university to shift coverage to Downtown and Pittsburgh-focused stories, put it to rest, because that’s not happening.
If all goes to plan, we will just have even more content than before.
To make this plan work, we need our readers’ support now more than ever. If you’ve ever thought about writing for us and want to help with a potential city news section, consider joining The Globe or contributing articles when you can. To consider expanding our coverage area, we need more people than we have now to make this happen successfully.
If you’ve always wanted to write news, features or entertainment pieces which don’t necessarily involve Point Park, the chance is now. City content doesn’t need the “Point Park hook” other content requires, but our readers still need a reason to care.
This could be history in the making. Opportunities are rising for student journalists here and, despite what some in the journalism industry like to say, print isn’t dying. It was just never given a chance for Gen-Z to thrive with it and experience it like past generations.
Perhaps expanding our coverage area can reward a chance for new writers to experience it? It’s not like people of student-age don’t care — the staff of Deja Magazine in Oakland created a new print outlet to fill the gap in fashion and entertainment coverage, some of which is starting to show promise.
It’s about time we close another media gap. For new writers, this could be a chance to shine. Talk to us.
