Pittsburgh City Paper on Wednesday announced it is cutting its weekly print edition.
Executive Editor Ali Trachta in a letter posted to the paper’s website said the alternative newspaper would continue posting content online and social media pages and will publish four print editions annually.
“Like many newspapers — especially the free alt-weekies across the nation — for a while now, we’ve been battling hard times,” Trachta wrote. “And it’s not because we lack the drive. We’re facing rising costs and less revenue, but also, misinformation, hostility towards media, a rough economy, and a loss of talent to more stable industries.”
The paper had to lay off five workers, Trachta told TribLive.
The issue released Wednesday marked the last weekly print version of Pittsburgh City Paper, “at least for a time,” Trachta said.
The weekly papers will be replaced with four “super-issues” each year, Trachta said. The first of those will be released in December.
Trachta described those issues as a “ ‘bible’ for the season,” which will contain event listings, news coverage and arts and entertainment stories, as well as the paper’s People of the Year feature, election guide and Best of PGH lists.
“All we ask, dear readers, is this: Please bear with us,” Trachta wrote. “We are setting the stage to rebuild, and we have every intention to come back bigger, better, and stronger … but just as delightfully weird and wacky as we’ve always been.”
A subsidiary of Block Communications, Inc., which owns the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, bought Pittsburgh City Paper from the publisher of the Butler Eagle in 2023.
