Pittsburgh City Paper relaunch signals hope for local journalism amid uncertainty

On March 19, Pittsburgh City Paper announced it was taken over by LocalMatters and would return to publication less than three months after its abrupt shutdown in December.

LocalMatters purchased City Paper from Block Communications — the Toledo-based media company that had owned the publication since 2023. Block Communications announced the City Paper’s closure in December of last year, citing economic decline. Block also owns the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which announced in January that it would cease publication on May 3 following a year-long labor dispute and more than $350 million in losses. 

Through the acquisition, LocalMatters holds a controlling stake in Pierogi Press LLC, the for-profit company that will publish City Paper going forward.

Tracy Certo, board chair of LocalMatters, said she and many others thought the City Paper was “well-worth reviving.”

“The City Paper has been a strong and vital voice for decades, and its sudden loss was alarming to many Pittsburghers,” Certo said. “Local journalism is vital to communities in keeping citizens informed and engaged in our region and it is essential in holding local governments accountable.”

City Paper will resume online and print operations as a free monthly publication, distributed in boxes across the city. According to Certo, nearly 1,000 readers have signed up for a membership since the new ownership was announced.

For former staff, the City Paper’s relaunch came as a welcome surprise. Bill O’Driscoll worked at City Paper from 1997 to 2018, serving as arts and entertainment editor for more than a decade. He now reports for WESA, Pittsburgh’s NPR affiliate.

“I was very sorry to see it go,” O’Driscoll said. “But [alternative weeklies] had a cultural heyday in the ‘80s, the ‘90s, even into the early 2000s.”

O’Driscoll said City Paper consistently covered ideas and communities that other local newspaper outlets ignored, and very few expected it to return after its closure. 

“We did a farewell and assumed [the publication] was gone. Then it reappears,” O’Driscoll said. 

“There’s some hope in that.”

City Paper’s new ownership has brought back some of its former staff. Among those returning is Colin Williams, who teaches ENGWRT 0400 “Intro to Creative Writing,” at Pitt and served as the paper’s news editor from 2013 up until its closure. Williams accepted an offer to rejoin City Paper after the relaunch was announced, having briefly taken a position at the Tribune-Review in the interim. 

 “In journalism, we are all sort of collectively used to getting a lot of bad news,” Williams said.

Williams had previously been laid off when The Incline, a Pittsburgh news aggregator, shut down in 2023.

 “It was remarkable to hear about an outlet getting resurrected and having someone do it with intent,” he said.

Williams said the new ownership structure opens possibilities previously off limits. Under Block Communications, Williams said covering the Post-Gazette strike or engaging in media criticism was challenging. Under LocalMatters, he sees an opportunity to write about the very industry City Paper operates in. 

The relaunch arrives as Pittsburgh prepares to lose the Post-Gazette. Post-Gazette workers went on strike in October 2022 following a contract dispute over wages and health care benefits. The strike ended in November 2025, but two months later, Block Communications announced that the Post-Gazette would cease publication on May 3.

“The loss of the Post-Gazette would be really dramatic and bad for the city as a whole [if it doesn’t get new ownership like the City Paper]. It’s something that can’t be replaced overnight,” O’Driscoll said. 

For other Pitt professors teaching the next generation of journalists, the City Paper’s relaunch offers a real-time example of how quickly Pittsburgh’s media landscape can shift. Allison Dyche, a Pitt professor who teaches ENGWRT 0550 “Fundamentals of News Reporting” and ENGWRT 1377 “Media Literacy” at Pitt, said the news reached her students quickly.

“At least 25%–50% of the class had already heard about [City Paper’s relaunch] before I said anything,” she said. “They were already excited.” 

Pitt is in the process of launching a journalism certificate, a program which Dyche is helping develop. The curriculum, she said, will aim to prepare students for the journalism field as it currently exists with a focus on multimedia storytelling, audio production and the ethics of public service journalism. 

Williams said Pittsburgh’s changing media landscape, while often intimidating, has opened doors for young journalists willing to seek them out.

“There is plenty of room in the pool [for young journalists],” he said. 

Looking forward, success for LocalMatter and City Paper would look like increased membership, a healthy revenue stream from advertising sponsorships, and good readership numbers, according to Certo. 

“No one said it would be easy, and we are all well aware that this is a challenging time in journalism,” Certo said. “But we think it’s worth an all-out effort to try and make it happen.”