Life Without Death and Comics   

For years, Pittsburgh resident James McCartney looked forward to having his afternoon newspaper waiting on his doorstep at the end of a hard day and a long commute.

But that was before a strike by delivery drivers stopped the presses at the city's two dailies, the morning Post-Gazette and the afternoon Press. The strike, which began May 17 to protest a new distribution system that would eliminate several hundred union jobs and 4,100 carriers, continues at WJR press time.

Living without a local paper has been a "real inconvenience," says McCartney as he stops at his fifth newsstand in search of a copy of USA Today. "It's hard to keep up with what's going on."

"There's a certain sense of detachment," agrees David Birks, who used to read both papers. "We're starved for local news."

Although the papers' staffs offered news via alternative mediums such as faxes and mailers, many major stories went without in-depth coverage. Among them: Doctors at the University of Pittsburgh performed the first transplant of a baboon liver into a human; the city's school board made a controversial choice for its new superintendent; Bill Clinton brought his presidential campaign to the city while candidates for Congress and state and local offices fought for votes; and, in sports, the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup and baseball's Pirates battled for a division title.

"I miss the local sports more than anything," says Pittsburgh fan Mark Pinti. "It does limit some of the interest. You're not reading about it. You're not informed."

Readers have made do without other staples, as well, such as comic strips, letters to the editor, television and movie listings, classified ads, horoscopes and death notices – not that there weren't attempts to provide substitutes.

Pittsburgh's three major television stations lengthened their newscasts and added features such as horoscopes, their own prime time listings and death notices that scrolled up the screen accompanied by soft (some say eerie) music.

"It's pretty bad when you have to watch TV to see the obituaries," says Debra Smit, a freelance writer.

With their urban colleagues on the sidelines, suburban newspapers sent reporters into the city and boosted their circulation. Newsstands also stocked up and reported increased sales of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

The crippled Pittsburgh papers, meanwhile, did what they could. At the Pittsburgh Press, which has a nonunion newsroom, reporters were assigned to long-term projects or wrote for scaled down editions distributed free by mail several times per week. The Post-Gazette laid off its unionized staff but later recalled 60
reporters and editors to prepare summaries distributed by fax and, for a time, on public buses and at convenience stores. Reporters aired updates on public television and recorded summaries for call-in lines. Costumed town criers were even dispatched each noon to shout out what would have been the Post-Gazette's headlines.

But coverage of the story closest to the livelihood of Pittsburgh's newspaper journalists – the strike itself – has been left largely to television and radio. And some readers and many reporters say they find it wanting.

"Complicated stories require print," says Dennis Roddy, a political reporter and columnist for the Press. "Just because one side is speaking sound bites more effectively than the other doesn't mean the public understands it any better."