The Pittsburgh Press

Newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The Pittsburgh Press, formerly The Pittsburg Press and originally The Evening Penny Press, was a major afternoon daily newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for over a century, from 1884 to 1992. At the height of its popularity, the Press was the second largest newspaper in Pennsylvania behind The Philadelphia Inquirer. For four years starting in 2011, the brand was revived and applied to an afternoon online edition of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

The history of the Press traces back to an effort by Thomas J. Keenan Jr. to buy The Pittsburg Times newspaper, at which he was employed as city editor. Joining Keenan in his endeavor were reporter John S. Ritenour of the Pittsburgh Post, Charles W. Houston of the city clerk's office, and U. S. Representative Thomas M. Bayne. After examining the Times and finding it in a poor state, the group changed course and decided to start a new penny paper in hopes that it would flourish in a local market full of two and three cent dailies. The first issue appeared on June 23, 1884. A corporation was formed, with Bayne as the largest shareholder. The paper referred to the city as "Pittsburg" until August 1921, when the letter 'h' was added.

In 1901, Keenan, who had by then gained financial and editorial control of the paper, sold out to a syndicate led by Oliver S. Hershman. Hershman remained the controlling owner until selling to the Scripps Howard chain in 1923. In 1961, the Press entered into a Joint Operating Agreement (JOA) with the competing Pittsburgh Post Gazette. The Post Gazette had previously purchased and merged with the Hearst Corporation's Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph leaving just itself and the much larger Pittsburgh Press. The agreement was to be managed by the owners of the Pittsburgh Press, E. W. Scripps Company, since the Press had the larger circulation and brand identity. Under the agreement, the Post Gazette became a six day morning paper, and the Pittsburgh Press became a six day afternoon paper in addition to publishing the only Sunday newspaper in Pittsburgh. On October 22, 1991, Press management announced significant changes, designed to modernize its distribution system, at the initial bargaining with the Teamsters Local 211 union, as well as eight other unions. The unions' contracts with the Press expired on December 31. Negotiations continued into 1992 with no agreement on a new contract. The Teamsters employees finally walked off the job on May 17, effectively putting a halt to the publication of the Press and the Post Gazette. The Teamsters refused to drive the small delivery trucks more than half full. In the press room, a union featherbedding provision under which its members had to set up every ad that appeared in the newspaper, even if it ran years before; in the case of advertisements prepared by outside print shops, those ads were still set up in the type used by the Press, and then dismantled. The backlog of such advertisements grew to several years long. With the increasing rise of electronic media, and more younger readers not reading newspapers, the Press could no longer sustain the union practices of the past. The unions would not budge and did not believe that the previous business model could no longer be sustained and afforded. A short sound bite on national TV by the then mayor supporting the unions was the death knell, and Scripps Howard consequently ended the newspaper. All the union jobs were lost, as were the jobs of over 100 non union employees of the newspaper. An attempt by both papers to resume distribution, with replacement drivers, began with the July 27 issues of both papers and lasted two days until they halted publication again due to resistance from the public and civic leaders. The second day, July 28, marked the final edition of the Press. The loss of the Pittsburgh Press came as a shock to many Pittsburghers, who expected the larger paper to survive the strike. In return for the sale of the Press, Scripps received The Monterey County Herald. The sale required a ruling by the U. S. Department of Justice as the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 regulated the JOA.

On November 14, 2011, Block Communications announced that it was bringing back the Press in an online only edition for the afternoon, effective immediately. David Shribman, the executive editor of the Post Gazette, explained his paper's motivation for reviving the Press name, citing the fact that his newspaper still received letters to the editor addressed to the Press instead of the Post Gazette, and that despite nearly 20 years since its last publication Pittsburgh natives still talked about the Press regularly. Although published electronically, the new Press was formatted with a fixed layout replicating that of a traditional printed newspaper, and its font and layout were similar to the original print version of the Press. The experiment ended with the issue of September 25, 2015.