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At first, January 7 felt to Bob Batz Jr. like a triumphant day. The Supreme Court had declined to consider an appeal from Batz’s longtime employer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the latest in a long string of legal victories for the paper’s union. In late November, after more than three years on strike, Batz and twenty-four colleagues returned to work. Now the Post-Gazette was legally obligated to reinstate the workers’ previous health plan, plus reimburse costs accrued when management failed to bargain in good faith.
A few hours after rejoicing over the Supreme Court news, though, elation turned to mourning. Citing 350 million dollars in losses over twenty years, Block Communications, the Post-Gazette’s owner, announced it would shut down the paper—one of the oldest in the country—effective May 3. The company took no questions from its employees.
The three weeks since have brought a flurry of activity designed to save some version of the Post-Gazette. Batz and his colleagues have been meeting multiple times a week—sometimes with potential funders, sometimes alone—to determine the best path forward. This morning, a group of them announced the launch of the Pittsburgh Alliance for People-Empowered Reporting (PAPER), which is raising money to research “worker-owned and nonprofit models as well as the potential for a truly independent Post-Gazette.” Forty-nine of their coworkers who didn’t strike, meanwhile, are working to overthrow union leadership in hopes of negotiating with Block Communications. Seemingly everyone in Pittsburgh’s large philanthropic world seems to be chattering about the potential for a nonprofit model.
For this week’s episode of The Kicker, I talked to Batz about the highs and lows of his thirty-plus years at the Post-Gazette and his three years on strike, from his job editing the strikers’ award-winning newspaper to the friendships that ended as a result of the battle and the efforts to build something new. Listen below, or at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
SHOW NOTES:
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