Changes continue to take place at the Post-Gazette more than a year since Stan Wischnowski came on board as executive editor after leaving The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Wischnowski replaced Keith Burris, who moved to oversee the editorial, opinion and commentary pages of the Block’s newspapers in Pittsburgh and Toledo. Neither Burris nor Karen Kane, the former managing editor who also moved to editorial and opinion, appear any longer on the newspaper’s masthead. Burris still does write columns for the PG.
At the same time, Wischnowski has brought in some big names to help run the newsroom:
Michael Sallah, who won a Pulitzer with the Toledo Blade and who headed a Pulitzer-winning team at the Miami Herald, came to the PG last year as senior investigations editor.
Roberta Zeff, who spent 27 years at The New York Times, including five as editor of its Well section, joined the PG this month as founding editor of a section focused on health and wellness.
Ashley Murray, who has been working on the investigations team, will be moving to the newspaper’s Washington, D.C., bureau.
Pittsburgh Catholic Magazine
The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, which stopped printing its 176-year-old weekly Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper in March 2020 during the pandemic, has launched a new Pittsburgh Catholic Magazine. The publication will come out every other month, and former KDKA anchor Jennifer Antkowiak will serve as editor-in-chief while remaining as executive director for communications and community relations for the diocese.
The magazine “will share stories of local Catholics who are living out their faith, as well as feature columns on spirituality, family life and other topics,” Bishop David Zubik said in an announcement.
Beaver County Times
After a few months of turnover, Beaver County Times Editor Patrick O’Shea penned a message to readers letting them know that four newsroom openings and have been filled at the Times and at its sister paper, the Ellwood City Ledger.
More than 100 journalists applied for the openings, and the newspaper interviewed more than two dozen applicants, O’Shea said. The new reporters are:
Joshua Carney, who grew up in the North Hills and who moved back to the region from Colorado to serve as the education and youth reporter;
Parth Upadhyaya, a former Penn State football beat writer who is relocating from North Carolina to write sports and youth stories;
Garret Roberts, who recently graduated from Robert Morris University and will be the public priority reporter covering cops and courts; and,
Noah Hiles, who has been providing sports coverage since February.
Broadcast media
Pittsburgh’s broadcast TV stations also have been hiring reporters — and swapping them:
KDKA hired Uniontown native and Indiana University of Pennsylvania graduate Erika Stanish to be a reporter. She comes most recently from Oklahoma City, and she previously worked at Johnstown’s WJAC-TV. KDKA also hired Shelley Bortz, who had been a freelance reporter at WPXI.
Nicole Ford, who had been working at KDKA, has joined WPXI, along with former KDKA anchor Susan Koeppen, who has started anchoring the 4 p.m. news.
WTAE-TV has hired reporter Ashley Zilka, a Duquesne University graduate who grew up in Rostraver Township. She most recently worked in Minneapolis.
Andrew Conte, founding director of the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University, writes the On Media column at NEXTpittsburgh with support from The Heinz Endowments. You can find all of his columns here, and you can email him.