Hello everybody and welcome to another episode.

We are back at Potomac Station Coffee House in dormant with a great episode coming your way.

But first I'm Valerie, that's David, and this is our Gen-X Pittsburgh podcast.

Tonights guest is Andrew Conte.

Oh my Lordy Lordy An award winning investigative journalist with the Trib, also the founding director of the center for Media Innovation at Point Park University.

You think you could retire after that?

But no.

He is now the founde and director of News Works Lab, and he found some time to write some books.

Wow, that's a lot.

I'm looking forward to finding out how the heck The center for Media Innovation is not part of the journalism department at Point Park.

I don't understand this, the whole connection at all.

So I'm looking forward to finding out, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Pretty cool.

You know, Gen X was in the news today.

I know, I know Costco of all places is selling.

How do you say it?

How do you say I want you to say it first?

Esprit Not a spirit.

Esprit Sweatshirts.

I can't speak French at all.

I this is it.

This is as good as it gets with English, right?

What's happening to our youth?

I don't know.

I know, but they're coming around if they're going to be all those things.

You know, Walmart sells Air Walk.

Yeah, I know.

You know what I mean?

It's unbelievable.

Trying to make a comeback.

Everything is so cool back then.

Yeah.

Except it was cutting edge and, like, independent.

And now it's all corporate.

And not that I wouldn't take it.

I mean, believe me, if anyone's looking for a corporation to hire me, don't think that I want to stay independent.

Right.

We are not those people.

Well, guess what I did last week?

Is that something to do with Gen X?

Yes.

Well, yeah.

Here in Pittsburgh.

I went to Dees Cafe.

Oh, good for you.

I went to Dees.

My mom and I were going to go and she's like, lets go to Dees and get a beer.

And we walked in and it was so smoky.

There was like 70,000 years of.

I mean, our eyes burned.

So we bought t shirts and we went to the, you know, the back room at D's, and we found our picture on the wall.

It was very cool.

That's really cool.

Well have to put tha into the show for everybody to s It was actually really cool.

Tom and I'm spacing on his last name right now.

He he drew everybody's like profile and everything.

It was really cool.

It's unbelievable how thos rooms retain both the darkness.

Well no wait wait wait wait.

Speaking of darkness, when the lady took us back to buy the t shirts, she had to use a flashligh because it was so dark in there, you couldn't see where you were going.

She opened up this big thing into flashlight.

She's looking for a small and a medium, and I was like, it's so dark in here.

She's like, yeah, this darn flashlight.

I was like, that tells you how long it' been since they sold a t shirt.

Yeah.

You know, but but also that smell of smoke.

Boy, I mean, you would walk into those place and there would just be a cloud.

Yeah, yeah.

And it permeated everything I know.

And now we're 30 years later, I know, and the cloud is still there.

I know I'm really stinky, but Dees remember Dees back in the day.

You go to The Beehive and then you go to these, and then you go back to the beehive and end up back at Dees and back at the Beehive.

I would say that the thing about Dees is, no, I can't remember that because of going back and forth so many times.

Right?

You get your cup of coffee at the beehive, and you'd go over to these and they'd put a shot in it of something.

So yeah, those were the days.

Those were the days.

Welcome back to the Gen X Pittsburgh Podcast.

We're here with Doctor Andy Conte.

And before we get started, I want to say it was Tom Coleman.

He was the artist who drew all the faces at Dees in the background.

I just wanted to throw that out there.

Thanks for coming in.

Oh, yes.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know if people know, and I shoul probably just put it out there that you and I have a relationship from the Downtow Media partnership and, you know, you you're nice enough to shake my hand every time I lose a golden quill.

And so I appreciate that.

You know the president of the press club Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

That's right.

Yeah, yeah.

Still.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, okay.

Let's see what we can do about next year.

Yeah.

We have a podcast category now.

You know.

So I know I'm looking forward to.

Well before we dive in.

I want to lose that category as well.

Yeah.

Exactly right.

Can you tell us a little bit about where you grew up, what life was like for you growing up?

Yeah, yeah, I grew up in I was born in Squirrel Hill, and then we moved to Penn Hills and Churchil and but I grew up in Greensburg, and so I went to Greensburg Salem High School and I almost were my band jacket tonight because I was like, that would have been fun.

You should have.

Yeah, I should have.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, right.

What did you play?

Trombone.

Okay.

So right in front of them something.

Yeah.

You gotta have the long arms for that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I was like, you know, the tough thing was when we were growing up that, you know, that's when the mills were closing.

And I remember sixth grade, my, you know, finished sixth grade and my two best friends, two, two of my three best friends, they moved away because their dads were like, you know, they.

Right.

Everybody was leaving.

And and then when I graduated high school, you know, a lot of people were leaving then too.

And I thought I was like, I'm leaving.

Leaving Pittsburgh, leavin Greensburg, never coming back.

But, you know, the city is like a blessing and a curse.

So here we are.

Yeah, yeah.

You can't get too far away.

It's unbelievable how many people leave and say, I'm never going back, right.

And all these people have.

Yeah, yeah.

There's just something about Pittsburgh that pulls everyone back in.

Now I'm waiting for my kids to feel that.

Right?

Because, yeah, my two kid live in Brooklyn and I'm like, come on.

Yeah.

Well, yeah I mean, Brooklyn is pretty hip, it's got nothing in Pittsburgh if you're asking me.

Right.

This looks like an outer outer borough.

That's right.

I always argue to people that Pittsburgh is the last East Coast or East coast city.

Oh, yeah, there's a lot of people that won't argue.

It's the first Midwest city.

Well, I mean, it's really an Appalachian city, right?

I'm not going to say that.

No, I mean, I live in Mount Washington and my the house, the street down, they have a four Wheeler parked in the front lawn.

I'm like, It's Appalachia.

I pretend that doesn't exist.

Yeah, I don't know anything about that.

So, Andy, you've had quite the career.

I mean, you really had.

But what was your very first job?

Please tell me you worked at the Gap or you worked at Chess King or Spencers?

I worked in the I was a playground cam counselor in Greensburg, so I. Yeah, I worked with kids there.

And, Yeah, that was that was.

Yeah.

I spent one Christmas working at the flower shop doing arrangements.

Okay.

I worked half a day at a gas station.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But yeah, not.

I never worked at Spencer's, though.

Did you, did you always wan to be an investigative reporter?

No.

I thought, you know, I did.

I was doing mock law in high school and I thought I'd be a lawyer.

And so I went to school for that.

And then my first, my first byline ever, I. I wrote a Bo Jackson the athlete.

Yeah.

And so he did this, the Bono's ads.

Right.

Sports illustrated ran a thing about how, when he was supposed to be ice skating, he was actually in his socks.

And so I just wrote him this letter saying like, oh, you should they should call him Shoeless Bo Jackson, like Shoeless Joe Jackson, baseball player.

Yeah.

And Sports Illustrated called my house and my parents were like.

And they were like, wow.

And sports like, where should w send the check to this author?

And I'm like, what are you talking about?

And they they ran it in scorecard and sent me.

Yeah.

I was like, wow, that was my friends.

I was like, you get paid for this stuff.

Oh my.

And yeah, and then I, I went to Dickinson College in Carlisle, and then I did a semester at American University, and I study journalism there, and I was like, I'm going to do this.

Yeah.

Wow.

So is that helped you catch the bug to be a writer?

The Sports Illustrated connection?

Yeah.

Yeah, that.

And then I started workin for the college newspaper, and actually I worked for the high school newspaper in Greensburg, but I was it conflicted with band.

I had band practic the same time as the newspaper.

And so it was a problem.

And so at senior at the senior banquet, the, the everyone who worked on the paper got a pin.

And I'm sitting ther and they never called my name.

I didn't get a pin.

And I was like, oh, you know, okay.

But then, I don't know, 15 years ago I was at the Trib and the I got a phone call, and this woman's like, is this the same Andy Conte who went to Greensburg Salem?

Like, yeah, she's like, oh, I'm your high school, I was the advisor for the school newspaper.

I'm so sorry I didn't give you a pin.

You're you're probably the most decorated, you know, graduate that we had come out of the program and I was like, okay.

Oh my God.

And I was like, well, send it to me now.

But I just didn't get it.

My connection to Greensburg is that I grew up in North Versailles.

So, you know, a little bit down the road.

And when I was in high school, I was published in Pitt-Greensburgs literary magazine.

Oh, wow.

And I thought, this is it.

Right?

Like, I was 15 years old, 16.

And I thought the world is my oyster, right?

And they had us.

I guess they had a reading, you know, wher if you were published, you came.

And I remember being like the only high school kid there.

Right.

And I brought my girlfrien and I wore a turtleneck, right.

Like, I thought I was so hip.

And turns out no other ki was wearing a turtleneck, right?

Like they were they were college kids more interested in what was going to be happening after.

Oh, yeah.

Right.

And I was going to get picked u by my mom and go, you know, so that's my Greensburg connection.

Yeah, I did it.

That was my first college class was Pitt-Greensburg.

Yeah.

During like a summer break, I did a poly-sci class.

Same thing.

I thought I was like, oh, I'm so right.

Yeah.

I'm so smart.

Right, right.

The Doogie Howser of Greensburg, right?

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So how did you get from being interested in the law and going to college to the Trib?

I mean, can you connect those dots?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So I when I went to American, I did this semester in Washington, and the professor was part of this column, the Jack Andersen's Washington Merry-Go-Round.

And it was a political column.

And the professor's name was Joe Spear.

He had shared the byline.

So every class, he would bring i somebody each week and be like, oh, this guy used to work for Jack Anderson, and now he's at ABC news.

This guy used to work for Jack Anderson.

Now he's at the Washington Post.

It was like over and over.

And so by the en of the semester, I was like, oh, I got to go work for Jack Anderson, right?

This is this is it.

So Jack called himself the Mormon muckraker.

He and the whole thing was like, we couldn't pick up press releases.

We couldn't go to press conferences.

And you just had to develop source and find out what was out there.

And so I worked for him for a few years.

Actually, I was still in college.

I that was the summer before my senior year.

And Jack was like, don't go back to school, just stay here.

And I was like, what?

So yeah, I was like, no, I'm going back to school.

I'm not going to miss my senior year.

But one of my friends stayed.

He was there and but they were like, okay, that's fine.

Go back to school.

We'll have your job for you when you get back.

And so when I graduated, that was my job, but it was $15,000 a year.

It was my.

Yeah, I know all about it.

And and then I worked there for a while.

Then I went to Columbia Journalism School for graduate degree.

And then I worked for Scripps Howard in Florida.

Okay.

And then Scripps moving to Cincinnati.

And that was like when I learned what a life lessons that when you live in Florida, everybody comes to visit you.

Oh, when you live in Cincinnati, nobody, nobody comes, yeah, yeah.

We were in Cincinnati for a few years.

Our son was born there, and wanted to be back in Pittsburgh.

That's when I was like, oh, I got to be back home.

Yeah, yeah.

And so Scaife owned the paper then.

Yeah.

Okay.

Dic Scaife owned the Tribune review.

And, you know, the Tri had come into Pittsburgh in 91.

Whenever The Press an The Post-Gazette went on strike.

And, and so, yeah, they had just moved into their building on the North Shore and they had established themselves as a paper.

And yeah, it was I figured I would be here 2 or 3 years, but, you know, they kept giving me more responsibility and more pay.

And so, yeah, it was a ver different paper then, the Trib.

I mean, between then and now it's really and we'll talk about in a little while, but it's really evolved.

I mean, it contracted for a while and now it's sort of yeah, the Trib is bac in a really big way right now.

But yeah.

And when I started in 2001, the Trib had just, you know, they ha they'd been around for a decade.

They had been at Station Square.

Do you remember that they were where the Buca Di Beppo was because it's closed now too.

But that was the Trib office.

And then the trim moved over t that Clark candy bar building.

Right.

Sure.

Yeah.

Right.

So yeah, one of m first internships, we used to do events at the bar in the Clark Bar.

That's that's how quickly Pittsburgh changes over.

I know I was in there.

I finagled my way in there a couple weeks ago because now I'm back in the building.

That's right.

That's my new building.

And it's so sad.

The Clark bar, there's no you know, they always had sports memorabilia.

It's all gone and all the boats are it's just a big empty shell.

And it's like, yeah.

So you've had a career of obviously doing investigative journalism, and we'll talk more about that in a minute.

But obviously sports, because you have a couple of books about sports that seems to be a passion of yours.

Yeah.

How did you go from from investigating.

Did you ever see, I guess, a wall between sports reporting, investigative journalism.

How did this all work?

I, you know, I started when I first started out.

I was like, I' going to be a sports reporter.

And I did it for a semester at college.

And I was like, oh, my God, this is too boring.

Like, it's so it was just like I was covering like the volleyball team and basketball team and stuff like, this is terrible.

So then but politics was like super exciting.

I covered the Penguins whenever they were trying to get the casino license in Pittsburgh.

Yeah.

And then when they didn't get the casino license and they threatened to move ou of town, and I was working the David Morehouse the president of the Penguins, he kept saying like, oh, this is a book.

You should write a book.

And I was like if you've never written a book, it's kind of it's intimidating, right?

It sure is.

But then they got the arena deal.

I had a front row seat for all of that.

And then they won the Stanley Cup.

And I'm sitting at home like, damn, that was a book I should have.

I should have done it.

And so I hurried up and turned it into a book and was fortunate.

Nobody had written a book about the penguins, and there was so much appetite for it.

It became about national bestseller.

What was something that was really surprising about the pens that you didn't like?

You didn't know?

What was it?

Yeah, yeah.

There were all these meetings that had happened in secret about the arena deal, and there was one night we were standing outside the state office building downtown.

It's now Riverview Apartments or something.

And the we were waiting for the penguins and the governor to come out and tell us they had a deal, and it didn't happen.

And so I was like, what happened?

So for the book, I went back and pieced it together.

I talked t everybody who was in the room, and people just kept saying that Rendell was, like, angrier than they'd ever seen him before.

And I was like, what?

What happened?

What happened?

And I guess he had flown in.

The flight was real bumpy.

He didn't feel well.

He gets into the meeting he starts accusing the Penguins of like reneging on the deal, and he flips out.

And Dan Onarato, who was th county executive at that point, had to hold him back to keep him from attacking the Penguins lawyer.

And.

Oh my gosh.

So I called Rendell for the last interview and I said, you know, okay, I pieced this all together.

This is what I've heard.

And he was already on his way out of office, but he's riding in his limousine and he's like, well, if you heard that, I swore a lot.

I didn't swear, but everything else is true.

And I was like, oh, you know, he's such a great politician.

He was trying to figure out, like, what can I say?

That was like, you know, I can still minimize this in some way.

So, yeah.

And the color of Sundays.

Yeah.

The color of Sundays.

Yeah.

So after the Penguins book came out, the I had a friend, a source who was working with the Steelers, and he was like, you should do a book on Bill Nunn Jr.

And I was like, I don't know who that is.

I have never heard of this guy.

I mean, a lifelong Steelers fan.

And he started telling me about his story and I was like wow, that's the story.

Nunn was, he had worked at the Pittsburgh Courier in the late 1960s.

His dad had been the editor of The Courier.

The Courier is like the nation's black newspaper.

And so, like, even though it's the Pittsburg Courier, they had 13, you know, bureaus around the country and additions everywhere.

And so Nunns job was to put together the black college All-America team.

Then the Steelers hired him, and he went out and found all these player that nobody had heard of before.

Yeah.

And so when I finally got none, he was like, well you can't do a book on me.

And but then he was like, you know, as long as you do a boo on the first blacks in the NFL and make it broader than just me.

And so that we we ended up doing that.

Yeah.

It was cool.

I mean, to the point of like, you know, we grew up with a Super Steelers right, in the 1970s.

And those are like some of my earliest memories, the Super Bowl victories.

And to be able to go bac and interview those guys that, you know, you idolized as a kid was that was pretty neat.

Yeah.

Can we see that on the big screen one day?

Yeah.

Can we talk about that or is that a secret?

Did I just spill the beans?

I wish, I wish you had.

Yeah I kno Netflix optioned it for a movie, but then they they gave me back the rights.

So yeah, there's.

Yeah, we're trying to work it out the I think the yeah.

Yeah, there' maybe it'll turn into something.

It's really interestin I think most people don't know how influential the Pittsburgh Courier was because they woul put them on the trains.

Right.

And so it went up and down across the United States and Chicago.

They had a huge branch, and they were really bi into the Negro Baseball League, you know, really importan in terms of that, promoting that just so huge.

But so, like, people don't realize that the NFL, we all know abou the Negro Leagues in baseball.

Yeah.

But and the original professional football originally had black players in it.

But in 1933, the year of the Steelers came in, the league went all white and stayed white for a decade after that.

It's about 13 years.

And it was the Courier tha the Cleveland Rams moved to LA.

They were the LA Ram and they wanted to play in the LA Coliseum.

And so the Coliseum board was holding a hearing on it.

And there was a reporter from the Pittsburgh Courier was in LA.

Not because he went for the cover.

Even that was his beat.

He lived in LA and and the question was, well, if you're going to, you know, you're going to use the public Coliseum.

Shouldn't you open the game to anyone who can play?

Wow.

And, you know, the West Coast was muc more racially integrated anyway.

And s the owner of the Rams was like, yeah, we'll let anybody play who can play.

And so that's wha led to the reintegration of foot But the Courier was the one They were the ones there.

Right.

And so they would like, you know, the reporter would call back to Pittsburgh, dictated story, and then they would print it here in Pittsburgh.

And like you said, they would put it on the train cars and the Pullman conductors would throw it off at different locations.

Yeah, right.

Did you think about it like a pre-Internet age like why that was so important?

Otherwise?

If you're a black person livin anywhere in the United States, especially like the segregated South, Jim Crow South, you had no way of finding out what was going on because, you know, the papers were white owned, the radio station was white owned.

You know, when there was TV.

And so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so how do we go from the Trib to Point Park?

So I at the Trib, I was always like, I could come in any da and it's going to close, right?

It's good.

You never know.

Like the newspaper business.

Like it's just like the media business, right?

Yeah, right.

I could lose my job at any moment.

And so I was like, I got to have something else.

So I started teaching on the side.

I taught at Pitt for a couple of years, and then Point Par reached out to me, Helen Fallon at Point Park, and she was like, you should come teach for us.

And so I started teaching there and I loved the program, and I that was 2005.

Okay.

And and then the, the publisher of the Trib died.

Dick Scaife died in 2014.

And it became clear like we had been insulated from you had a billionaire owner of the Trib, and you had this very wealthy family of the that owned the Post-Gazette, and they were losing many millions of dollars.

And so, you know, it became clear that was going to have to change.

So I went to the folks that Point Park and said, I think we should have laboratory where we figure out, like, what is the present and future of local news?

And they were like, yeah, let's do it.

So the presiden and I worked on getting a grant from the Allegheny Foundation, which was one of the places where Dick Scaife left some mone And and we started the center.

Okay.

And that center when I became aware of it, if I haven't spoken about it enough on the show, I went to Point Park when it was a college.

But everybody know that.

Yeah, yeah, we all know it.

But when I came back to to the center, it was it seemed like its focus was on podcasting and things like that.

Is that correct?

It was about like, whatever, whatever was new.

What was different?

Like what?

What are the new platforms?

What are the new ways of storytelling and connecting with people?

And I mean, it's when you guys put these the lav mic on me today and it was like, oh, this is so cool, because when we started, it was 2016.

It wasn't that long ago.

But I remember Bob Pompeani, another Point Park grad, he wanted to do a show from Point Park.

And and at that point we were like, okay, we'll have to find like a high speed data line.

We have to or or a satellite truck.

Where can we get a microwave truck out here?

Yeah.

And now it's like.

And then it went to backpacks and now it's just like your phone connects to wherever.

It's unbelievable.

I think about this all the time because of this show that when I started at KQV in 1996, we're using a board that was probably as big, seriously, half the size of this table.

Right.

And it had four channels.

Oh, really?

No way.

And now I have a board you know, I carry for this podcast.

It has eight channels that fits into a backpack and literally cost a couple hundred dollars.

Right.

It's professional board.

It's not an amateur board.

It's unbelievabl the changes that have happened in our lifetimes in terms of media and I'm not even talking about and we'll talk about this in a minute, like the actual delivering, you know, the product.

But I mean, just the physicality of it, the idea that many what is it?

Two decades ago I worked for a, a documentary when they brought the NFL draft, NHL draf to Pittsburgh to the first time.

And my job was to run tapes back and forth.

Right.

To put in the camera.

Right.

Because you only had X amount of time on the tape and they couldn't carry all the tapes with them.

Yeah.

And now with your cell phon you can produce a documentary.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

You know what I mean?

So just the physical product.

But I think that that's what's so interesting to me that CMI was sort of taking this approach of looking at what was coming up.

What what right.

And was this a graduate program?

Was this an undergraduate program, which is not a program for not a program?

Yeah.

That was a confusing thing for people.

Was that it?

I wasn't part of the school of communication.

I reported directly to th to the provost, and the idea was that we would serve the entire university and that I didn't really know how it was going to go.

We first the first year, we just hung out our banner and said, we're going t we want to work in local news.

And we started working with newsrooms.

They started buying into it like, oh, this is great, we need help.

What can we do?

And then the foundation community bought into it and that's they started.

I felt like I never we raised $8.5 million for the center while I was there, but I felt like I never asked for any money.

It was like I just talked about like, we're going to do this thing, and people would come to us and be like, well, yeah, how can we be part of that?

Can you explain what you do?

Like for our listeners, like what exactly are you doing there at Point Park?

Yes.

So I'm no longer at Point Park.

I was there until, you know, six weeks ago, two months ago at this spring.

The center, the idea was that local news was goin through this massive disruption.

And so it became like, let's try some different strategies to see how can we ensur that local news has a present.

And so like one of the things we did was the Heinz endowments reached out and they said, we did this, we did a study of local news and we don't know what to do with it.

We just finished it.

They wer like, can we give you $17,000?

It was like a weird number.

It must have been like where they had left over in their discretionary account.

And if we give you that, can you figure out what we should do next?

And so I like to joke.

I spent it all on beer and pizza, which you've had some.

Right?

Yeah.

Right.

When I brought in all these journalists and we just talked about like, what should we do?

And there was it was Mil Sanina who was at Public Source, and she said, we're all trying to put each other out of business.

Like, what if we actually collaborated on something?

And I was like, wow, that's that's revolutionary.

And so that's what we started doing.

We formed the Pittsburg Media Partnership, and now it's got 45 members, something like that, 40 plus members.

And they all they all still compete for scoops.

They compete for dollars clicks.

But they also see value in sitting around the same table once a year.

They meet online once a month and just realizing that.

So we provided money for collaborative reporting.

We provide training, networking.

You help with interns.

Yeah, we do a big intern program.

That was unheard of years ago, right?

Yeah, I mean together.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

That the first thing we even.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

The first night we had the the first beer and pizza night, one of the editors pulled me asid and she was like, why would we?

We would never work with these people.

We're trying to put him out of business.

And then it was when the Fern Hollow Bridge collapsed.

And it was Jim Busis from the Jewish Chronicle.

He he lives nearby.

And he called me within a half hour of the collapse and was like hey, I'm here, I've got photos.

Is it okay if I share them with all the other partners?

And I was like, wow, this is like, it's going to happen organically.

And so yeah, yeah, Jim is very good about that.

Oh yeah.

And in fairness, many of the partners really are like, everyone really tries to make this thing work and sees real value in it, which was certainly not the case.

I mean, by the way, touched you just touched upon it.

But when I started in media, it was not about that at all, you know, and I'm probably right.

So I started full time in ‘96.

Were you already working in ‘96?

Yeah.

In the city?

Yeah.

So not in Pittsburgh.

I wa I was out of town at that point, but yeah, working for bigger papers.

I graduated from college in ‘93.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So you're a year older than I am because I should have graduated ‘94.

Okay.

But I was hanging out with Craig Hall, and we never made it out of the door.

Right.

Yeah, but but it's to me, one of the reasons that I really wanted to have you on the show is because you're sort of at this forefront right now of what Pittsburgh has done since the beginning, which is the innovation of media.

Right?

I mean, Radio Pittsburgh was right there.

Right?

We've talked about the the Courier.

Right?

I mean Pittsburgh's always had a foot.

It doesn't seem like nobody thinks that.

Right?

Andy Masich at the Heinz History Center.

I mean, he's so eloquent articulate anyway.

But he, we had an event back in February whenever the Post-Gazette announced they were going to close.

And he talked about the, you know, the first pioneers carrying a printing press over the the Allegheny Mountain and setting up a newspaper here.

And and that was the Gazette that became part of the post, because tha the Trib was also in the 1700s.

And I was down in the basement of the Trib last week in Greensburg.

There's a huge wooden box, and it's filled with wooden letters that they used to lay out the paper.

Yeah.

Isn't that crazy?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, it's so it's really interesting.

I worked I' not going to say what station, but when they were closing, they were throwing out things and they had pictures of like when they brought the Beatles into town and they were just throwing it away.

And I was like, what's going on?

They're like, it's just junk.

Oh yeah, you're like, no, it's not junk.

I hope that's in your basement somewhere, right?

There are some things in my basement.

I'm not going to say what they are or aren't, but there are definitely some things in my basement.

But it's unbelievable to me how in some ways, how callous we are about this, right?

The BBC would record shows with artists or huge events, but because tape was so expensive they would just record over it.

The next day.

There's a big time capsule up in my so I, I raised my kids in Mount Lebanon, and then we moved to Mount Washingto and the it's the the B94 offices Yeah.

You know.

Yeah, yeah.

Under the radio tower righ up there overlooking the city.

And it's like they just walked away.

The door still has the B94 logo on it.

Yeah it does.

That's right.

Yeah.

Like, how do we get in there and find out.

Like, is it still like I' a picture like Madonna poster.

Yeah.

The live album.

Yeah.

Right.

I'm sure you are correct.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was the first statio not to hire me, I think.

Okay.

When I was, when I was applying everywhere rejection letters on the wall.

Yeah, yeah.

You know what I used to.

Honest to God, I used to have a whole wall when I wanted.

When I thought I was going to be a fiction writer.

Oh, yeah.

Of places, you know, and.

Daves wall of rejection.

Fanned across my wall, right?

Yeah.

And some of them were really, you know, some of them were very terse.

Right Thank you for your submission.

We will not be publishing you, right?

And other ones were like, hey, we really like this or we like that.

And I don't know, maybe if you learned how to write, we would, you know, come back to see us in a few years.

Well, answer me this.

Are there other cities doing what we're doing?

Yeah.

I mean, I think there are.

I mean, there's been a movement to figure ou what's going on with local news.

So like the collaboration that we started was inspired by resolve.

Philly was a collaboratio they were doing in Philadelphia, which I you know I shouldn't say that out loud.

Pittsburgh.

We took something from Philadelphia.

But yeah, but then we perfected it.

And there's kind of, you know, mutated.

So yeah, Pittsburgh still wins in the end.

No, there are a bunch of cities that are trying different things.

There's something called the Press Forward, Press Forward as a group of foundations, and they have 43 chapters around the country.

They're all working on different strategies for local news.

So there's a lot happening out there.

And the funny thing about Pittsburgh was when the I was in, I was on vacation when the City Paper, I got a text from Collin William at the City Paper saying, like, they just laid us all off.

That was New Year's Eve.

And then I came home.

We were working on how do we respond to that?

And that's when the Post Gazette said it was closing.

And it seemed like this is the the bleakest moment.

We're at the bottom.

And instead, what we saw was this burst of strategic thinking and investment.

And you have the City Paper came back, you've got the Post-Gazette has new owners, the Trib came back into the city in a big way.

I'm supposed to to plug the Trib did a column about you guys.

Right?

Oh they did.

Yeah.

That's right.

Yeah.

Ben Schmidt was like, I got to work that in somewhere, so love it.

He's an excellent writer, and he sure does know how to pick good subjects.

Yeah.

All right, let me just throw this out there, too.

We all went to a art opening over the weekend.

Okay?

And it was in the basement of.

It was beneath the poster store.

Right?

The old poster store that used to be on Smithfield Street.

Yeah.

I don't know if you Down by like the frame shop you mean?

Yeah, yeah yeah yeah, yeah.

And again, these kids were trying to make it.

Trying to make it.

They couldn't get their foot in the right doors.

So they just did it themselves.

Yeah.

And it's what we did back in the day.

And it seems like everything's kind of like rebirthing in Pittsburgh.

Yeah.

That's what Pittsburgh's so great at, right.

Like it's affordable.

You can do that kind of stuff here.

And yeah thats why we love it.

Hey guys it's Valerie and David with the Gen X Pittsburgh podcast with your Gen X culture drop.

So before we jump into the week I just want to remind everybody that the summer show is happening at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens.

It's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

So if you're looking for something whimsical and kind of bizarre, the botanicals there should be totally awesome.

Sounds good.

Yeah, there's there every week.

The city doesn't cease to amaze me.

I know there's so much going on.

Sometimes we forget the joys of Pittsburgh in the summer I know, I know.

And on Tuesday, Jul 28th, Quantum Theater presents The Tempest.

We're at Carey blast furnaces.

Well that should be pretty awesome.

On Wednesday, July 29th.

What's it smell like?

It smells like there at the City Winery, 7:30 p.m.. They're on a tribute band.

Yeah, that should be fun.

And on July 30th, we'r going in the opposite direction.

Tiffany.

Tiffany will be performing at your goals in Warren Dale, a Gen X icon.

Yeah.

For real?

For real.

Also on Thursday, art House theater day at the Harris Theater is going to do the car wash, which we all watched on 53.

It's the 50th anniversar and they have a documentary, 40W from nowhere.

It's about low.

What radio stations and pirat radio stations in the early 90s.

So pump up the volume, which was, you know, another touchstone of Gen X filmmaking, right?

That's followed up on Friday still in the cultural district, the cultural district Gallery crawl.

That should be so much fun.

It's there.

Always so great.

Yeah.

If you're free on a Friday you should definitely come down and take a loo at what Pittsburgh has to offer.

Exactly.

And then on Saturday, there's another art crawl in Lawrenceville.

This one happens between 36 and 50 second Street.

They're going to have over 200 exhibiting artists and over 75 performers.

If you can't get enough art, Everclear art, lead art and art is going to be a journalist at 8 p.m.. Awesome, awesome.

And then on Sunday, August 2nd, we got more bands coming in.

We have Richard Marx, Richard Marx at the Palace Theater, and the Black Keys will be at stage A-E.

Did you know that Richard Marx wrote Vixen, a hair metal all female band's biggest hit?

No way.

Really?

Yeah, he was dating the guitar player or drummer.

Wow.

Yeah.

And while we're here at Hair Metal, Ricky Rockman, who was the host of MTV's Headbangers Ball, is going to be here on Monday August 3rd, I guess talking Aqua Net and Dorking.

I mean, I don't kno what else he's going to discuss, but it's going to be a it' called One Foot in the Gutter.

So maybe we'll hear a little bit about Bret Michaels.

Maybe I'm sure we're goin to hear about the Sunset Strip.

Sounds good.

Yeah.

Okay so some pretty exciting things coming up in the next week in Pittsburgh.

That's right, that's right.

So enjoy the week here in Pittsburgh.

And we'll see you guys next week with more happenings in the bath.

Welcome back to the Gen X Pittsburgh podcast.

We're here with Doctor Andy Conte.

I'm good.

I like that.

I've never heard you call doctor as much in my life.

Nobody calls me that anymore.

I called him Andrew and h was like you can call me Andy.

But then I was like, oh, you're a doctor.

I'm like, maybe I should throw that in there too.

Okay, not the useful kind of doctor, though.

Yeah.

If you have a community engagement emergency.

Guys, you're our man.

You're our man.

I know, David, do you want to talk about News Works lab?

Yeah.

How good?

I just want to hear about it.

I mean, the announcement came out that you were going to lead this investigative journalism project.

Those are my words right from the Trib.

But I don't know that anybody really understands what that means or.

Or what we can expect from it.

Can you talk a little bit about it?

Well, yeah, we're figuring it out in a day at a time, but no, I when the Post-Gazette announced they were closing, I started talking pretty frequently with the folks of the Trib.

And, you know, if it had been 15 or 20 years ago, there would have been champagne bottles opening at the Trib like, oh, this is great.

We won the.

And instead the folks the Trib were talking about the kinds of things we'd been talking about at the center where like what's best for the community, what's best for the ecosystem how can we support local news?

And so one day I reached ou to Jen, their CEO, and I said, you know, like I think I'm ready for a change.

I want to do something different.

And she said, well we're thinking about doing this experimental newsroom, you know, do you want to run that?

And so it came together pretty quickly after that.

And the idea was to put into practice the things we've been talking about.

So collaborative reporting, can we get a bunch of news outlets to work together on a story?

Can we engage the public i storytelling in a different way, where they're actually part of the news process with us?

Can we tell stories with the newest technolog and the latest data and stuff?

That just isn't really happening much in Pittsburgh?

And so we're going to and the expectatio is not to like, succeed either.

It's like fail quickly succeed quickly learn.

Report out what we found an then iterate and try it again.

And this is you been doing it for like six months now.

Six weeks.

Six weeks.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

And this is sort of what your last book, I mean, not really, but your last book, death of the Daily News.

I want to make sure I get it right.

Right.

I mean, it sort of touches on this, right?

Like, with Pittsburgh used to have a million different local newspapers.

Right.

Hyper local kind of McKeesport news.

Braddock.

Was it the Braddock Daily News?

There were all the gateway presses, right?

I mean, there were a lot of papers here in Pittsburgh, and they all went away.

And you sort of.

Well, not all of them.

They didn't all go away, but many of them got absorbed by the Trib.

Right?

Yeah, yeah, the Trib bough up a lot of them.

Yeah.

Right.

And some of them went away.

Yeah.

And the, the that book is, was my PhD dissertation was looking at a community that where a 131 year old newspaper closed.

And what happens what do people do after the paper closes?

And it was eye opening like people, the like the politicians there.

At first they were like, this is so great.

Nobody's going to be asking us to have questions anymore.

And then within 2 or 3 months, they were like, oh no, we're screwed like nobody else.

Also, nobody's going to tell our stories anymore.

And they didn't have a way to reach their constituents.

The little things that people took for granted, like the Daily News Baseball League, is like a a like semi-pro.

No, not semi-pro, you know, like a, like an adult baseball.

Right.

And they still call it the Daily News Baseball League, even though it's not you know, the news has been gone and, and, and everyone I talked to like if you ask people like, do you remember the first time you appeared in the news and they're like, oh yeah.

Like, do you guys remember?

Yeah, yeah.

What was your.

Yeah, I was on th cover of I lived in Connecticut, the Enfield Daily News, playing this ball game that my friends and I had invented on the sidewalk.

And our picture, that was the first time I was in the news.

And it's clipped, an it hangs on your grandmother's bulletin board and.

Yeah.

And and everyone told me stories like that.

They all remember, you know, exactly when they were paper and and then and then when that goes away, people really don't know where to get their news anymore.

We have the first thing.

The first big awakening for me was this older woman down there in McKeesport.

And she's like, well, I don't know when my friends die like they die.

And I don't find out until weeks later.

I run into somebody at Walmart and they say, like, hey, did you hear so-and-so died?

That was like a month ago, right?

Like there's no obituary, but there are now.

There's the The Mon Valley Independent is there now and there's, you know.

Yeah.

And it does, though, in a very real way, speak to the fundamental need.

Right.

Because what you're doing in investigative news is incredibly important.

Right.

But I know that for the paper I write for, I could spend three week working on some in-depth story, right, and uncover some really important piece of news.

And yet people are most interested in the obituaries, pictures of the grandkids, you know what I mean?

Like, yeah, like, yeah, of course, these investigative pieces are really important, but fundamentally, people want to know what's happening in the house next to them or need to know, you know, what's happening in the borough building down the street.

Well, and now people rely so much on Facebook and which can be great.

You know, these people dedicate their time, they volunteer their time a Facebook group administrators.

But you also get like a mishmash of information.

And that's what we found in McKeesport.

Was that like every time the cops would show up, somebody would post a Facebook like, what are the cops doing here?

Well, the cops are just doing their routine thing, but and after a while it starts to become like, oh, there's crime everywhere in our neighborhood when it's really not right.

And and there's conflicting information.

And even when there was a case when it's in the book where a, a police officer was sayin he was listening to the scanner and watching on Facebook, that was it, and watching on Facebook.

And somebody posted and said, oh, well police officer's been shot and I and somebody else then said like, oh, I drove past the hospital and I saw all these police car there.

That confirms it.

Yeah.

And he jumped in and he's like, I'm a police officer.

Nobody got shot.

And they're like, you don't know what you're talking about.

Shut up.

Right.

Because like people, especially people in a certain generation, right.

Like they when they see something and they really like, oh, that's the truth.

And it's hard for us to correct that and say, oh, no, what I saw was wrong.

Right.

So do you have any sort o projects already in the works?

Is there anything you can talk about, or is everything sort of I mean, it's all it's, you know, it's it's in the laboratory right now, bu but the idea is to tell stories.

I think a lot of people when you say like, oh, we're going to do accountability journalism, we're going to do investigative.

Like their eyes roll ove and they're like, oh, I can't.

This is too much.

And for me, it's like, how do we make that interesting and fun and engaging and something that people actually want and they want to they want to consume it.

They want to share it, they want to spend some time with it.

And I think that means delivering i in some creative ways, you know, and figuring out what those are and then really engaging the public in it to like starting the story and letting the public finish it.

Yeah.

And taking things in small bites that build audience and build sources over time.

Yeah.

We'll see.

I just I hired my team.

They'll all be together by the end of August.

That's great.

Yeah, yeah, we'll see what happens.

Yeah.

All right.

Where do you see the future of media going?

Oh, the future of media.

It's not I think we I so the thing that gives m the most hope, honestly, is the, the, the young people right now, they are, you know, when we were coming up, those of us who got into journalism, we were at the end of the Watergate era, right.

We were inspired by there were all these journalists who were like these Woodward and Bernstein and Jack Anderson.

These reporters took on the president and held him accountable and had, you know, all the president's men held them accountable.

And we were like, this is what we want to do with our lives.

We want to hold power to account.

We want to speak up for people who don't have a voice that kind of that waned for a long time.

And then we had this, this massive disruption in the industry.

Lots of journalists lost their jobs.

But I'm seeing it now with the the young generation like 26 and younger, where they're like, this is what I want to do, and I don't care how much money I make I don't care what I have to do.

I'm going to drive an hour each day to go to work.

But I want to be part of this.

And they've taken over the Press Club, the the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania.

Up until a year ago, I was the youngest person on the board of directors and I was like, I'm not young.

You can see from my gray hair and, and and so we gotta, we gotta change this.

And the these kids, they I see kids, they were like in their mid 20 and they had started meeting up monthly They were just like hanging out.

And they were like we're we're doing our own thing.

And so we kind of reached out and were like, do you want to be part of the press Club?

Do you you know we can give you some resources.

And they were like, yeah, that'd be amazing.

And so there's now a Young Press Clu and they're tearing it up there like they go and they do their own thing.

We had an event a month ago at Trace Brewing and the kids put it on, and there were like 100 people there.

It was it was great.

It was.

Yeah.

That's fantastic.

Yeah.

For them.

Good for them.

All right.

Well, we're not going to let you go yet.

We have one more thing to do with you here.

All right.

This is called rapid fire rewind All right, let's do it.

So we're going to fire these off.

Just give the first thing that comes to your mind.

This is what I really wish I had my band jacket.

Right.

I know, I know.

Yeah.

All right.

Are you ready?

All right, I'm ready.

Iron City or Rolling Rock?

Oh, that's a hard one.

I mean, it was Rolling Rock when I was growing up, but then they broke my heart, so it's Iron City all the way now.

Okay.

Okay.

What's your favorite alternative band?

OMD.

All right.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's perfectly acceptable.

Yeah, yeah.

The Cure too, obviously.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah yeah, yeah.

Big cure guy.

Robert Smith.

Three Rivers or Heinz Field?

Oh.

Heinz Field.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, I'll go with that.

What's your favorite Gen X movie?

Oh.

Let's see the.

It could be anything from the 80s 90s.

You know.

Yeah.

No, I mean, I just watched Striking Distance, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

So.

But that's like kind of a terrible movie, but.

Yeah.

So Bruce Willis.

That's right, that's right.

Right.

Yeah.

Turner's or Schneider's?

Oh, Schneider's I would say.

Okay.

Right.

Do you have a favorite Saturday morning cartoon?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I love Tom and Jerry.

Yeah, that's that's the secon or third time thats been said.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was more like after school, right?

You could.

Right.

That was cool.

But it's close enough.

Yeah.

Bugs Bunny, I guess.

Yeah, sure.

Donzis and Chaunceys or Metropole and Rosebud?

Oh, you know, I wasn't here in those years.

My my formative years.

Yeah.

So I when I was like, I'm leaving town and I'm not coming back.

I missed out on all of that stuff.

Yeah, I did.

Yeah.

Okay.

What was your first concert?

It was OMD and Depeche Mode at the Palumbo Center.

That's awesome.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Southside Beehive or Oakland Beehive?

Oh, yeah.

So that's another thing I missed out on the Beehive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But if I had to say I would say Southside Beehive.

Yeah, sure.

Way cooler than Oakland, right?

Atari or Nintendo?

Oh, we couldn't afford Atari.

So we had Nintendo.

Yeah.

Okay.

Right, right.

Donkey Kong?

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

Kennywood or Sandcastle?

That's not even a question.

I mean, I know, you know, I mean, you could also throw in Idlewild.

That was, you know, because I'm a Westmoreland County kid, so I know, but, yeah, Kenny, I've actually never been to Sandcastle so.

Yeah, really?

Yeah, I gotta go.

Those water slides are pretty intense.

I remember trying to pull that sword out of the stone.

Yeah.

My sister was Snow White.

She was on the postcard, at Storybook Forest.

Oh my God.

That's cool.

How about Primantis or Pamela's?

Oh, wow.

That's a tough one.

The original Primantis down in the strip.

Yeah.

Right.

Okay.

Which I did a story once, so I went out with the garbage guys in the morning, and then I was like, well Il go get breakfast at Primantis.

That's a that's a tough one.

The breakfast at Primantis.

Right.

Yeah.

When you're when you haven't been drinking all night.

Right.

You're going in stone sober.

Right.

So you're right.

You're right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well.

Andrew.

Andrew.

Okay.

Oh.

It's good Yeah.

No.

It's good, I love it.

Yeah.

It's perfect.

Yeah.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you so much for being here with us and filling us in on news work, labs and in your career.

It's been great having you Thank you so much, Doctor Conti.

Yeah, thanks.

Thanks for representing our generation.

The lost generation.

Thank you.

So.

Yeah.

Thank you.

And thank you for watching.

We'll see you guys next week.

The Gen X Pittsburgh Podcasts hosts are David Rullo and Valerie Christofel executive producer, David Rullo.

Producer and graphic designer Kim Rullo, producer, Valerie Christofel, video production and editor, Brent Isaac.

Music by Neostem.