Collaborative Reporting

Collaborations are an important aspect of the Pittsburgh Media Partnership, and those collaborations have taken many different forms since the Partnership’s inception in 2020. In 2022 alone, the Partnership awarded more than $12,000 in grants to allow members to pursue four major stories/series: One on equity in the Pine Richland school district (Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism [PINJ]), another on mental health issues in Pennsylvania jails (PINJ & Spotlight PA), a series highlighting Pittsburgh’s Latino communities (Pittsburgh City Paper & Pittsburgh Latino Magazine), and a series of profiles on the Pittsburgh agriculture project “Sowing Soil with Soul” (Soul Pitt Media and The Allegheny Front). In February 2023, the Partnership approved a $5,000 grant to enable more than a half-dozen outlets to pursue stories that are part of a series on misinformation/disinformation. From late December 2022 through calendar year 2023, the Partnership awarded nearly $34,000 in grants for broad collaborative reporting projects. From the fall of 2023 through early 2024, the Partnership produced three projects:

  • Belt Magazine, Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and City Cast provided an overview of where Western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio and the West Virginia panhandle were in terms of the book challenges and bans that have been enacted against schools and libraries through the U.S. This collaboration resulted in a lengthy story that appeared in all three publications in early November.
  • PublicSource and WESA-FM combined to look at the changing nature of the Pittsburgh voter in two stories that ran and aired prior to the November 2023 election. The Partners dedicated a portion of the PMP grant to use social media – and specifically Instagram – to broaden their audience reach and engagement. Stephanie Mirah of PublicSource provided an-depth report after the fact showing how those efforts proved fruitful, as the two outlets used the social media platform to meet readers and listeners “where they live.” (Note: WESA left the Partnership later in the year.)
  • The New Castle News and the Pittsburgh Union Progress – the latter made up of reporters, editors and photographers from the striking Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — combined forces to complete a series of stories in advance of the one-year anniversary of the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023. The two outlets produced six stories in all.

In late 2024, PublicSource and Pittsburgh Magazine teamed to tell the story of Pittsburgh’s Smithfield Street, a once-thriving shopping corridor that fell on hard times but is fighting back.