After a few rounds of recent layoffs, it looks like Pittsburgh’s PBS station, WQED, is starting to implode under the weight of finding a new direction and fending off their own obsolescence. The station’s management has decided to begin shuttering local productions in favor of piping in licensed PBS national material and posting things to the internet.
The station also seems to be poised to learn the hard way that attempting to find footing in the realm of the internet and social media, to court younger demographics, is a damn near impossible task. The management has lost the plot of doing a thing well and getting people’s attention through the well done thing.
It’s happened before with other publications and media outlets that had been gobbled up by tech bros and hedge fund douchebags. Due to their lack of creativity and eye for quality, they transition away from what made these things special and unique and toward flashy gimmicks and the mediocre. Then come the staff departures and layoffs followed by bankruptcy and liquidation. I do find it odd that the first people to lose their jobs in these instances are always the ones that were willing to put in the hard work and actually gave a shit about what they were doing. The vapid bottom feeders seem to make the cut because they are the most malleable when it comes to towing the company line. Which is one of the many reasons why billionaires should a) not exist in the first place and b) not be allowed to buy up media outlets and treat them like their own personal playthings.
Losing any local coverage is dangerous for a community. No matter how mundane and innocuous that coverage may seem. Almost every major source of local information in Pittsburgh has been bought up by the right-wing/corporate machinery that pulls so far to the right that the center is seen as far left. And because of abysmal media literacy and an overabundance of general apathy in the Pittsburgh area, no one seems to have noticed that the reporting has been watered down and dumbed down to the point that there is very little journalism left in it.
Even our “left leaning” alt-weekly is now owned by the same family of conservative dickheads that took over Pittsburgh’s last remaining newspaper which is now run by scabs and doesn’t even print on a daily basis. Every Wednesday, this alt-weekly produces nothing but articles about real estate, sex and paid partnership promotion for the most boring local events imaginable. The paper is getting thinner and thinner and the coverage is getting worse with each issue. From layout and graphic design to articles that don’t even come close to scratching the surface of what’s going on in the city.
And not to be a prude, go ahead and put all of the stories about sex that you want into your paper but maybe add a few more pages that go beyond mobile fuck clubs, indoor minigolf and whatever the fuck pickleball is. It feels like the alt-weekly’s priorities have shifted from promoting underground arts and fucking with authority to being a tourist guide for young professionals with expendable income.
With every step away from local news coverage we get closer to entertainment being mistaken for information. Right now it seems like there will be an in-depth three part series about a football player farting before there would even be a mention of something that actually mattered.
There are fewer sets of critical eyes on our ever growing stable of local pigfuckers that are out there causing real damage to our communities. Every local outlet wants to play nice so that they don’t lose their access when they try to one up each other when something goes down. Which is a very large part of why reporters have become police stenographers and repeat police reports verbatim instead of questioning them when the facts are clearly being misrepresented. How dare someone risk upsetting our self appointed military dictators by making an accurate account of their ultra violent behaviors without using a passive voice.
In an ideal world where budget cuts weren’t a thing, WQED could potentially have had its own local newscast. Where they wouldn’t have to feign impartiality to the point of rendering a story meaningless when some local dickhead would inevitably get caught being a dickhead. They could actually report the news beyond weather and sports and not waste time with sensationalism and presenting both sides of a story when one side is clearly and objectively in the wrong. Essentially, they could have built a local news organization that would call a pigfucker a pigfucker without equivocation and move on.
The known corruption, laziness and ineptitude of the past several, and current, mayoral administrations could have been brought into the light of day instead of barely having been acknowledged. No one seems to wonder why our bridges are collapsing and our homeless camps are growing but boy howdy do we have nice stadiums and a casino for everybody to max out their credit cards.
Who cares that a medical insurance company is masquerading as a nonprofit and Hoovering millions of dollars out of the pockets of our citizenry? Every so often they’ll throw some money around to sponsor a public event or a little league team and all of their greed is swept under the rug.
Wouldn’t it be nice every time some Christian Nationalist is spouting off at the mouth about whatever hot button culture war issue was giving them the vapors the segment would end with a reporter saying, “Absolutely nothing you just heard was grounded in fact or medical science,” instead of coddling them and taking their bullshit as fact? Especially with the way in which the Pittsburgh media tries curry favor with the Catholic Church. There always seems to be an effort to sidle up to power and to feel a part of it instead of challenging it, like they’re supposed to.
There was a chance for this to happen back in the late 90s when WQED had a few different public affairs type shows but they never took that last logical step of creating a news room that wasn’t beholden to advertisers or corporate overlords.
By the time some of these shows had run their course, they devolved into shouting matches featuring the same local talking heads and radio personalities that hindered public discourse way more than it helped to advance it. Even back then the producers fell into the entertainment trap.
At this point though, I’m almost glad that they didn’t create their own independent newsroom. We would probably still be in the midst of seeing this hypothetical organization being dismantled by management lackeys that couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag simply because there are dollars that could be saved. I guess we’re better off without this nonexistent institution so we’ll be spared mourning the loss of this thing that I just made up.
Much like when Capitalism makes everything else go to shit, journalism is getting very low to the ground, DIY and independent. There are nonprofit news organizations around town that are trying to do the work of informing the public. They operate by the skin of their teeth and do what they can with their limited budgets. But it’s because of their limited budgets that they can’t really drill down in more than one area at a time. Add to that the fact that no one reads anything or cares about anything anymore. Nor do they possess the attention span or critical thinking skills needed to absorb and process ideas and concepts that are larger than the results from the latest singing competition.
All in all, I guess what I’m trying to say is that we’re fucked. Fucked in the simplest of terms. Capitalism has created a cultural wasteland of convenience and absolutely no substance. Greed isn’t going anywhere and the greedy can now operate with more and more impunity while the rest of us are beaten into submission as we scrape together a few dollars to pay our bills.
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