An open letter to the Block family

Dear Block Family,

It wasn’t that long ago that I wrote in this very newsletter one of my furious open letters that I’ve been writing for 17 years now, this one to Pirates owner Bob Nutting. That open letter was so bursting with the fiery flames of my righteous indignation that it was reprinted as an essay in your paper, ironically launching a stint of me contributing essays to the Post-Gazette, which you announced today would cease operations in May. I used that letter to ask Bob Nutting a question.

“Are you proud?”

Over and over, I showed him the legacy he was destroying—a legacy that includes the extraordinary life sacrifice of Roberto Clemente—and I asked him, “Are you proud?”

I now ask you that same question you printed in your paper that day … are you proud?

Your family statement announcing the closure stated, “We are proud of the service the Post-Gazette has provided to Pittsburgh…”

Are you proud of what you’ve destroyed? Do you know what we call people who stand over smoldering ruins and take pride in the destruction? Supervillains.

Are you proud that you failed? Are you proud that you are losers? You’re losers in court. You’re losers in legacy and in being good neighbors and in business. You’re losers who stand in front of your newsroom drunkenly berating staff. You’re losers who childishly smack people with hamburger bags. You’re losers who tell your employees you’re shutting down their paper via a prerecorded video rather than having the guts to stand in front of them and look them in the eye. You’re even losers in fashion.

You look like Sheriff Woody interviewing to assistant-manage a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

But most importantly, you’re losers in being Pittsburghers. You took a storied history stretching back to our military fort era and you pulled on your stupid cowboy boots and you stomped it into the ground just weeks after you ripped the City Paper away from us. You spent years and likely millions fighting a ruling you knew was inevitable because you knew full well that you broke labor law.

But you did more than just spend money; you spent our legacy. You bankrupted our history. You poured acid on it and watched it shrivel away, not caring one bit because you have enough money in your pockets and in your safes and in the art in your homes and the accounts in your banks.

I don’t begrudge anyone their wealth; I despise those who purchase or inherit legacies and then do nothing to protect them. That’s the tragedy here. It was never safe in your hands. You never cared for it the way you should have. You shifted your editorial slant to mirror your own, which stands in complete opposition to the majority of the city in which you operate, and wondered why your subscription numbers plummeted.

You let us all down and now you’re taking your ball and going home because the highest court in the land ruled against you. You don’t get to blame the union when court after court said the same thing—you, you, you were the losers. It all started with you and it now ends with you when it should have ended years ago with you recognizing you aren’t worthy of our city, our paper or our history.

I don’t know what it would have taken, that is true. Print journalism is an incredibly challenging market. But I do know you weren’t invested enough in the legacy to commit yourselves to making it work. You fought the strike and even when the writing was on the wall that you would lose, you fell prey to something that intellectually weak people often do: sunk cost fallacy. Yes, I’m telling you that your attitude is akin to cult-think. You became too focused on the money you already spent and the position you already took that you forgot to look into the future. Instead, you became terrified of doing the work of thinking reasonably. You were so far in, that even when you realized staying in would mean destruction, you stubbornly wouldn’t turn back. You spent and you spent and you marched your cowboy boots right past the point of no return knowing that by doing so, you were going to destroy the very thing you wanted us all to believe you were trying to save.

Please hear me, Block family: don’t for one day for the rest of your lives believe in your hearts that when you leave this Earth you will leave behind a legacy worth honoring or respecting. Don’t for one day for the rest of your time in Pittsburgh believe that we will see you in a restaurant or on the streets and not call out to you. To shame you. To remind you of what you destroyed. We deserved to keep our legacy; you don’t deserve a moment of peace in this town now that you killed it.

We will ring the shame bell. We will boo you to your face. We will mock your clothes and your hair and your hat and your billowy pants tucked into your stupid boots. We’ll remind you of your role in our story: the supervillains. We’ll remind you that you’ll all go to your graves not as builders—which is what true Pittsburghers are—but as destroyers.

You create nothing. You leave nothing. You are parasites who are no longer welcome in Pittsburgh where we now have to mourn that which you murdered.

May you leave. May you rot. May you choke on the inhaled ashes of the legacy you set on fire. May you take Bob Nutting with you.

PittGirl out.

[exhale]