When Zakary Littlefield bought a home on a dead-end street overlooking Pittsburgh’s South Side, he didn’t suspect that he’d be forced to sell it just three years later. Littlefield’s recently-renovated home is one property that the City of Pittsburgh intends to buy and then retire to mitigate the risk of landslides during a season of extreme weather events.
The story of 11 properties and the broader civic issue of landslides is just one example of PublicSource journalism reaching Pittsburghers where they are through a multi-pronged approach including long-form storytelling, vertical video and community engagement — in this case, over 50,000 Pittsburghers.
PublicSource’s dedication to empathetic storytelling, dogged reporting and engagement has not only fostered community connection but also propelled us toward impactful digital journalism.
In our pursuit of serving as an essential, unique news source in the Pittsburgh region, we humanize complex issues and convey fact-based information through powerful narratives, photography and data visualization. Our team has doubled down on connecting our work to the people — both those in our stories and those we want to reach. And, we’re building a deeper understanding of communities by just plain spending more time with them.
Through our Beechview Points of Pride series, we created an asset map highlighting the resilience of the immigrant and Latino community. Every PublicSource staff member spent time in Beechview. The stories, co-published in Spanish, showcased successes like mobile clinics and youth programs. This initiative deepened relationships and shared community strengths; fueled a deep dive into a community developer’s failed promises; and informed ongoing improvements in how we engage with sources who don’t speak English. One notable online impact: The project has diversified the search results for this dynamic community beyond public safety stories to include those that front its strengths.
We deeply covered the 2023 election of the Allegheny County executive, the first such election in 12 years. The Allegheny County executive post is widely viewed as one of the most powerful in Pennsylvania. Our coverage offered valuable insights into local politics and governance, from more functional issues like property taxes and environmental regulations to those of political and generational identity. On the heels of a town-hall forum we prompted and co-hosted with two other media organizations — engaging over 50 in-person attendees and 3,000 online viewers— PublicSource unpacked the consequential election. Since, we’ve followed the new administration closely and benchmarked their actions against campaign pledges.
And, we implemented an Instagram approach focusing on Reels that will be portable to other vertical video channels. We’ve grown Instagram followers by 30% over the last year. The quality of comments and conversation is heartening. We’ve heard from recent graduates of Pittsburgh Public Schools sharing their experiences in the education system. We’ve talked with people about their thoughts on decisions to tear down historic buildings in downtown Pittsburgh and heard from local university students that they appreciate our coverage of the budget crises and graduate student organizing at colleges. We will continue to grow this following to foster community.
