The Baltimore Banner’s parent organization will buy The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – a purchase that will allow the more than two-century-old Pennsylvania newspaper to avoid its closure that had been planned for next month.
The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which oversees the Banner, announced on Tuesday it had reached an agreement to acquire the Post-Gazette from the Pittsburgh paper’s current parent company, Block Communications.
The Post-Gazette was slated to publish its final edition and end operations on May 3. Now, under this new agreement, the Venetoulis Institute will take ownership on May 4.
Leaders of the Venetoulis Institute and Block Communications celebrated the deal.
“For nearly a century, the Block family has been dedicated to public service in Pittsburgh,” said Stewart Bainum Jr., founder of the Venetoulis Institute, in a statement. “We are honored that they trust us to continue this work.”
“The Block family has worked to find the best possible source for responsible local journalism for the Pittsburgh region and we believe we have succeeded,” said Karen Johnese, chairperson of Block Communications, Inc, in a statement. “We are excited to hand our treasured paper over to such a committed and creative organization. We trust in their integrity and care for our community.”
David Shribman, who served as the Post-Gazette’s executive editor from 2003 to 2019, will join the Venetoulis Institute’s board of directors.
Venetoulis Institute president and CEO Bob Cohn said his organization is dedicated to restoring local community journalism.
“Venetoulis is committed to solving a national problem, to providing high-quality local journalism where it’s most needed,” Cohn said in a statement. “That is our civic mission. And here is an opportunity to do that in a market where the 240-year-old incumbent is going out of business or could be sold.”
Bainum added, “Local journalism is essential to a strong community, but across the country the business model has been under severe strain. We believe there is a path forward — one that combines great journalism with a diversified business model built on scale and exceptional talent.”
The move marks the Venetoulis Institute’s first venture outside of Maryland. The nonprofit organization launched in October 2021 to oversee The Baltimore Banner.
Bainum, who founded the Venetoulis Institute and The Baltimore Banner after his bid to buy The Baltimore Sun proved unsuccessful, has committed $50 million to support the Banner since it was founded.
He has newly committed $30 million to the Post-Gazette “over the next five years or until the organization breaks even, he said,” according to a Banner article.
2025 was a particularly banner year for the Maryland newsroom, which won its first Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting after its journalists conducted a multi-year investigative reporting series about Baltimore’s opioid crisis.
Months after the award, former editor-in-chief Kimi Yoshino left the newsroom she helped lead from its inception to join the Washington Post. Since then, former New York Public Radio and San Francisco Chronicle editor-in-chief Audrey Cooper has taken the helm at the Banner.
The Banner has expanded throughout the region, with a staff size that rivals that of The Baltimore Sun and the recent launch of the Banner’s coverage in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. The Banner continues to seek growth, listing several job openings on its website, including for various editor roles, a digital producer, and a sports reporter.
The newspaper that was founded in 1786 as The Pittsburgh Gazette would undergo several name changes over the years, though it always held on to “Gazette” as part of its title.
Meanwhile, the Daily Morning Post (which would later become The Pittsburgh Post) was founded in 1842.
The Gazette and Post backed opposing political parties and were news rivals. But when Paul Block came to own them both, he merged the two to form the Post-Gazette in 1927.
The Post-Gazette won multiple Pulitzer Prizes: in 1938 for an investigation that revealed Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan; in 1998 for photographs of Rwandan and Burundian refugees; and in 2019 for coverage of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.
After an appelate court upheld a judge’s decision that the Post-Gazette’s owners, PG Publishing, had violated federal labor law, Block Communications announced in January 2026 that the newspaper would shut down at the beginning of May.
