I set up a GoFundMe for former @pghcitypaper.com staff. This will be used to help us submit last year's stories for awards, defray loss of income and insurance, and support laid-off single moms with childcare. Chip in if you'd like:

Precisely this. Journos don’t both-sides robberies, murders, etc. Some things are empirically wrong & don’t require “balance.”

I think the second part is the bigger news.

Every time I see all the billboards for personal-injury lawyers in Vegas, I imagine foreign tourists new to them instantly wondering how dangerous the U.S. really is.

Mr. Snider is not a fan of fascism... #music #activism

Is he taking a shit on North America?

Today is Quintidi the 15th of Nivôse in the year 234. Nivôse is the month of snow. Today we celebrate the rabbit.#JacobinDay More information on the rabbit

The bigger problem, I think, is the inability of Americans to form an angry mob. Colorful signs, knitted hats, calls to Congress, etc. seem to be the best we can muster. Perhaps that’s why the reps have no fear.

I made a playlist

Nicolas Maduro has been extradited to New York to face the full force of a presidential pardon. by Karoline Leavitt

This is billionaire-controlled media. They want to sleepwalk us into another forever war. We must break free.

in this statement, Schumer says Trump lied to him THREE TIMES about this invasion. but Schumer's only concrete ask is for Trump to BRIEF CONGRESS. why? so Trump can lie again? IMPEACH. Call your reps and demand they IMPEACH. reps.fyi

Members of Congress: stop posting online and APPEAR, PHYSICALLY on the steps of the Capitol to decry this unconstitutional violation of domestic & international law. SHOW THE PEOPLE the level of danger we are facing as a country. @housedemocrats.bsky.social @senatedemocrats.bsky.social

The president unilaterally decided to attack a sovereign nation and kidnap its leader, and now he says he's just going to run that county himself for a while too. Call your representatives now and demand they impeach him.

"Somewhere in the background, the real bosses smiled and went silently about their business" — Hank Messick, 1967. There are lots of possible explanations for why Newport overshadows Covington in vice histories. Maybe Messick nailed it w/this observation re Cleveland. linknky.com/culture/2025...

If these long-gone walls could have talked ...

Big congrats to the Nobel Committee for awarding the prize "for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy" just so she could immediately conspire with a foreign government to murder civilians on the high seas then invade and stage a coup.

Who is willing to send troops into the US and capture its autocratic leader & put him on trial? At least in that scenario, a case could be made that the leader is a genuine threat to millions (billions) of lives.

We're going to need a bigger Hague.

Honestly it would be very funny if FIFA revoked the prize.

The FIFA Peace Prize doesn't mean what it used to

Banjo anticipates a future behind bars.

Spoiler alert: He gets away with it because of moral anarchy. geneweingarten.substack.com/p/why-does-t...

I'm reminded again today why "historic preservation" should be called something else without "history" in its name. There are lots of pretty old buildings being "preserved" and the stories attached to them are nice, but not necessarily "history."

I wrote and scheduled this before the ax came down and I’m sharing it now b/c it celebrates how in awe I am of Amanda Waltz @colinbwilliams.com @stacypgh.bsky.social @marsjohnson.bsky.social & Rachel Wilkinson and always will be. Love you @pghcitypaper.com ❤️ www.pghcitypaper.com/news-2/cp-ye...

It’s 2026 and one of the first things that has happened is that a major news outlet has announced that it will no longer seek information from experts. I don’t think this is gonna help with what I think is the most existential threat to our society currently: disinformation.

What does it mean when your doctors keep insisting you redo the cognitive exam

Congress should leap on this and pass a law requiring prospective presidential candidates pass a US Constitution literacy exam. If you don’t know the Constitution, you don’t belong in the White House.

After moving to Covington, I could have fallen in love with any of the 19th century commercial buildings or brick tenements or bridges (there's a Roebling suspension bridge just 20 minutes away by foot). Instead, the alleys got to me. Happy New Year.

Some of these redactions are almost like modern art

Banjo is really getting into this office organizing.

Trump Has Renamed the Kennedy Center, but a Satirist Owns the URL www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/u...

CBS Evening News hasn't posted on Bluesky in 13 days This was their last Trump-talking-point post

Keep in touch, Yinz. Follow us at @stacypgh.bsky.social, @colinbwilliams.com, @awaltz.bsky.social, @marsjohnson.bsky.social, @alitrachta.bsky.social We will miss you. 💔

If I thought it would make a difference, I’d share this panel in the Auschwitz exhibit in Cincy with the editor with whom I worked last year. I emailed an audio clip from an interview describing an entire family disappearing via ICE. Needless to say, I didn’t write the story. No one did.

A gambler who played a key role in regional & national sports betting history died while living in an apartment inside this Northern Kentucky building.

From alert to inert in 12 months.

I'm starting the year working on another Pittsburgh sports history story. Looks like we'll be watching "Angels in the Outfield" (1951 version) for research. Note to editors & readers: I really am not a sports writer nor am I a sports historian.

If only 6% of our Bluesky followers subscribed to our newsletter (it's free!), we'd reach our end of year goal. Have you subscribed yet?

It is kind of wild that no big media outlet has busted open the story of who is making DHS' posts on X. Whoever that may be is certainly plugged into hardcore white supremacist internet propaganda with a harder edge. "Groyper" would be underselling it. This is Daily Stormer-tier sludge.

It’s not even “are these people racist?” It’s “do these people have any beliefs at all besides white supremacy?”

So, the actual Heritage Americans sued about the placement of an immigration facility in the Everglades and are now being punished by the Trump administration

What the chicken fried fuck is going on here

There’s something really icky about this post ….

Sad to see Pittsburgh City Paper going away. In 1996, the then-young weekly gave me a shot and I got to learn from John Hayes, Chris Potter, Bill O'Driscoll and Lisa Cunningham, among many others. Our region's media landscape loses a source of lively, community reporting triblive.com/business/pit...

2025 was the year newsrooms became a madman’s steno pool. Please do better in 2026.