The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which will begin operating the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Monday, has made cuts to the newsroom staff.
The Venetoulis Institute’s deal to acquire the newspaper’s assets, owned by Block Communications since 1927, was announced last month, coming months after Block Communications announced now-axed plans to shutter the paper.
Since the nonprofit only bought the assets and not the paper in its entirety, it is not required to take on the contracts previously signed between Block Communications and employees, according to the nonprofit’s other newspaper The Baltimore Banner.
The newsroom staff is represented by the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, part of the Communications Workers of America. Union leaders allege that the Venetoulis Institute targeted them and fellow workers who engaged in a yearslong strike to ensure management abided by healthcare-related terms in the union’s contract with the paper.
The union wrote on X that the nonprofit was “cutting at least 40% of staff, and 80% of former strikers. It is sad, vindictive, and does not bode well for what we’ve fought and hoped for, including the success of the PG.”
At the time the deal was announced, Venetoulis Institute Chairman Stewart Bainum Jr. told the Post-Gazette that its “current business model does not support the size of the current newsroom.”
A Venetoulis Institute spokesperson told Axios that “we are a nonprofit news organization determined to put the publication, which was on the verge of shutdown, on solid financial footing, so that it can serve the people of western Pennsylvania for generations to come.”
The head of the union, education reporter Andrew Goldstein, told WESA-FM that of the 25 reporters who had participated in the strike that were still at the Post-Gazette, only five were kept on board, and that only one of the union’s leaders was retained.
Mr. Goldstein, who told Axios he was among those who was cut, told WESA-FM that the choices in who the nonprofit kept were “clearly an attempt to give as little power as possible to the people who are active Guild members and to continue to punish the rest of the Guild members who went on strike simply for standing up for their rights.”
Several local officials sent a letter Wednesday to the new leadership at the Post-Gazette, posted online by union leadership, urging them to work with the union in light of the years-long labor strife.
The Venetoulis Institute has told the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, per a release by the union, that it does intend to negotiate with them for a new contract for the remaining employees.
Some of the local leaders who wrote the letter have denounced the Venetoulis Institute for the job cuts.
“I had hoped that a nonprofit organization would have some respect for the fact that Pittsburgh is a union town. To have signed onto this letter and then have the first thing they do afterwards be in complete opposition to what we asked them to do is — I don’t know that you can print it,” Pennsylvania State Rep. Emily Kinkead, a Democrat who represents part of Pittsburgh, told WESA-FM.
Rep. Summer Lee, a Democrat, said in a release from her office that “Workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have once again suffered betrayal after enduring years of illegal union-busting. New ownership had an opportunity to turn the page, rebuild trust, and invest in the local journalism this region deserves. Instead, they doubled down on the practices that brought this institution to the brink in the first place.”
