What's your dream? Season tickets.

When I first moved to Pittsburgh, I experienced a deeper culture shock than I could have imagined. I had never encountered such fanatical loyalty to a region. I heard stories of 'Burghers who had left for the big time and, astoundingly, chucked their success and bright futures to return, like salmon, to the rivers of their childhood to live in modest circumstances and find jobs far more humble than what they'd been doing. The insistence on proximity to family and high school friends mystified me -- that's what phones, e-mail and airplanes are for.

But the most baffling part of all this to me was the lack of something I used to hear a lot about in high school and college: "striving for excellence." I was raised to believe that you were born with gifts and brains and talents, and you should do your level best throughout your life to make the most of them. You apply to the best colleges you have a shot at getting into, you go to the best one that will take you, and you pursue dreams. You aim high when young so that, when you inevitably have to adjust your expectations downward, they don't slide into the basement.

Pittsburgh has a completely different ethos; I would call it "striving for contentment," or the pursuit of "good enough." You go to a college within 150 miles of your home, and you don't even bother to think about one far away, because the local ones are good enough and you couldn't afford it anyway. (No one can afford top-tier schools. That's what grants and loans are for.) You get a job that is convenient for your family. Don't think about a promotion that would take you to another city (and double your salary and provide more opportunity). Stay here, stay close, stay safe. Don't get a swelled head and think you can run off to New York or L.A. and forget where you came from.

In so many conversations I've had with Pittsburghers -- including, most disturbingly, teachers -- I get the strong impression that "ambition" is a dirty word. Ambition is a sin because it means "you think you're better than other people." Isn't everyone better at something than other people? Must that be suppressed? Is conformity the way to happiness? Is it arrogance to strive for excellence when what you have is good enough?

I'd also never lived in a place where even the young people have little interest in seeing the world. I'm always stunned when I hear a college student say, "Boy, I sure hope I can find a job here. I'll live with my parents if I can't find anything right away." Whatever happened to, "Boy, I can't wait to ditch this backwater. I'm going places! I'm going to be rich and famous and set the world on fire"? Isn't that what young people, wherever they've grown up, are supposed to say and feel? If you don't have passion and drive and big plans at 20, how are you going to conjure them at 40?

In a city with so much potential, so much to offer, so much to recommend it, and such a mysterious sluggishness when it comes to growth and progress and vibrancy, could this complacency be an undiagnosed disability? Or is restless striving merely a recipe for disappointment? Are Pittsburghers so devoted to the city because without dog-eat-dog competition, it's easier to find the bluebird of happiness in their own back yards?

More Pittsburgh vs. Phoenix

The Census Bureau has it's press release on the differences between Phoenix and Pittsburgh, with Tampa thrown in for good measure. Few socioeconomic metrics differ by an order of magnitude between regions in the US. When it comes to what makes Pittsburgh unique, I think we can trace every single argument over the good, the bad and everything in between to these two census derived stats:

Percentage of occupied housing units built in 1939 or earlier:
Pittsburgh - 29.7%
Phoenix - 1.5%

Percentage of homeowners that have lived in their current housing unit since 1969 or earlier:
Pittsburgh - 26.9%
Phoenix - 4.5%

Is this really the Pittsburgh theory of everything? Discuss.

mergerPA.gov

No, that domain does not exist to my knowledge.

Not quite sure what is bringing up the confluence of coverage on government consolidation right now. A view from out east on government fragmentation in Pennsylvania is in this post on the WHYY blog It's Our City: Too many boroughs? A closer look at municipal mergers. Followed by the Trib's version of what is happening on the ground here: City debt concern delays merger with county, and even Johnstown's Tribune Democrat weights in with: Consolidation: End the silence Legislature must play an expanded role. Nothing new to any of this and the same issues have been debated for decades centuries across Pennsylvania. Philadelphia's 19th century merger of it's city and county was precipitated in part by a law that required municipalities outside of Philadelphia to maintain minimal police services. That just comes to mind with the recent news that Allegheny County's Versailles Borough voted to become the latest local community to disband its local police force. Has anyone compiled a list of how many local communities have no local police whatsoever? Maybe Mike's attorney colleagues have some comments on whether anyone has a right to sue for police protection from their own municipality. Or a more interesting question: could the Coase Theorem apply to the externalities impacting a community bordering a municipality that has chosen to not pay for a local police force?

Anyway, I guess I ought to update my Primer on Regionalism and Local Government Fragmentation in the Pittsburgh region.

More on the Future of Pittsburgh Media

Buried in today's Post-Gazette story about Steelers Nation converging on Pittsburgh for the Super Bowl ("SixBurgh," which I heard for the first time today, has a nice ring to it. But what do we do for the next Super Bowl? That's a question that only Steelers fans need to ask . . . .) is this line:

On Wednesday, the Post-Gazette asked out-of-town readers of its Web site to call and write with their Pittsburgh Super Bowl travel stories. The newspaper had to take down the request shortly thereafter, due to the flood of replies.

To have such a problem! And the Post-Gazette has been buying out contracts of its editorial staff because it's struggling to make a go of it in the post-print economy.

First, of course, it's a sign of just how little attention the paper pays to its online version that it wasn't prepared for the response to its promotion. It's an open secret that the Post-Gazette's website gets thousands and thousands of visits per day from expat Pittsburghers -- the Pittsburgh Diaspora, to coin a phrase. Maybe the online infrastructure (both tech and human capital) could use some upgrades?

Second, if one were thinking about the future of Pittsburgh news, one might think: How can we monetize that traffic and leverage the Diaspora to save the Post-Gazette?

Here's an idea: Make the paper all about Pittsburgh -- the city and its neighborhoods, and the region. Get rid of national and international news, or park it in a separate small section. Fewer and fewer people read the Post-Gazette for that, since it's all wire service material anyway. I take my national and international news online, and from the Times (for the liberal slant) and from The Economist (for the conservative slant). Pittsburgh stuff is what the P-G audience wants both online and offline, and a lot of them want it, and it's all that they want.

Where's the money in this? Adjust the rate cards for advertising to account for the online circulation. Historically, newspaper ad rates are set according to print circulation figures, because the assumption is that the message is meant to reach local readers. The Post-Gazette's publicly-available advertising information reflects that bias:

If your goal is to connect with western Pennsylvania's consumers, then you need the strength of the region's news and advertising leaders - the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and post-gazette.com.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is western Pennsylvania's largest newspaper and has been the region's indispensable source of news, advertising and information for 220 years. Click here for an overview of advertising opportunities.

As the most-visited web site in western Pennsylvania, post-gazette.com reaches more local adults than any other web site.

Note the local emphasis -- even for the online base? Moreover, online advertising is separate, and while not exactly hidden, it's not front and center, either.

You might think that local businesses would care only about print ads and reaching customers who patronize them in person. I'd be willing to bet that e-commerce being what it is (and what it can be), even in today's economy a lot of local businesses would be happy to market online, to the Diaspora. Make the editorial content as local as it gets -- but globalize the advertising structure. (I'm not a big Tom Friedman fan, but this sounds vaguely like something he wrote once.)

Pittsburgh vs. Phoenix, pt. 1

Just staying ahead of the wave of Pittsburgh-Phoenix comparisons that will be flowing over the next week, it is worth asking what is there to compare? No matter how you slice it, you would be hard pressed to find two more dissimilar regions in the US. Phoenix may have been the fastest growing region of the country in recent decades if not for most of the 20th century. Pittsburgh, however defined, was not. The question then becomes what is the cause of Phoenix’s growth and our decline. All sorts of things are regularly debated as the factors affecting regional growth. Taxes, infrastructure, human capital and talent, proximity to markets, and weather would be just a short list of what determines the economic competitiveness of a region. I wish I could boil it all down to one reason as many want to do all the time.

Without looking it up, I would bet Phoenix comes in well below Pittsburgh by most measures of tax incidence, whether personal or corporate. Is that the cause for the disparate recent histories of the two regions? Maybe, maybe not. With debate over regionalism and government always popping up here, is it important that the 3.9 million people of Maricopa County are represented by all of 24 municipalities compared to the 130 in Allegheny County with just over 1.2 million residents? Allegheny County is regularly measured as one of the most fragmented local government structures in the nation, Phoenix I am guessing is closer to the other extreme again. Where do you start if trying to draw causality?

Maybe history matters. In most of the century when Pittsburgh was producing ever more iron, coal, coke and steel for a growing nation, the greater Phoenix area resembled the surface of the moon more than anything else. When the Homestead Steelworks alone experienced strikes of tens of thousands of workers in the 19th century, Arizona was barely a territory, Maricopa County had a resident population measured at under 11K total population (barely above 1 person per square mile) and the City of Phoenix proper would have likely fit into Market Square. Makes you wonder what the recent trends for Pittsburgh would be if it could start from scratch and not be anchored by innumerable brownfields and all the other costs and legacies of an industrial past that had to decline from its peak.

Maybe we will dig into the comparison a little more over the next week. Beyond the efficacy of 3-4 defenses that is.

The Future of Pittsburgh Media

As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sheds writers and ad space, and as no one in Pittsburgh can figure out how to pick up the slack, consider this commentary ("The Future of News, Part One") by C. Edwin Baker, a senior scholar of mass media policy and the First Amendment at the University of Pennsylvania. Part One is the problem, and the problem is only partly that traditional media organizations haven't a clue what to do with the Internet. The related problem is that the size of the advertising market is mostly fixed, and as advertising income gets redirected to online enterprises, much less money is left over to support print journalists.

Possibly most serious, advertising is a more or less fixed pot. Huge portions of advertising revenue now supports the suppliers of the “search” for all sorts of already-produced information (including product and personal information) rather than journalistic entities which produce news – which is the story of huge capitalization of Google. Internet advertising that basically did not exist thirteen years ago clocked in at $21.2 billion in 2007 – with 41% going to advertising related to “searches” – and the amount is rising rapidly. That compares with annual newspaper advertising of roughly $40 billion, an amount in decline due primarily to this increasing diversion to online advertising. Though advertising always goes down even in minor recessions, even more so in anything like what the country is currently experiencing, the movement to online advertising is of historic significance for the news industry. Essentially the advertising that has long paid for journalism is in irreversible decline. Without a solution, the future may simply provide an inadequate financial basis for support of the journalism profession and for the news a democratic society needs.

In this strict economic sense, many Pittsburghers lament the passing of Kaufman's, but few Pittsburghers lament it more than the owners and employees of the Post-Gazette.

Baker's quarry is something bigger and broader than the survival of daily journalism. He is concerned about the quality of political life, which suffers in its absence. The failures of transparency and petty (and sometimes large) corruption that often characterize local and regional government go unexamined. Citizens have even less information than they usually get in order to make decisions about candidates, issues, and the other things that affect their lives. (Baker doesn't talk directly about bloggers, but it's clear that bloggers, alternative media, and citizen journlists can pick up only so much of the slack.)

Part Two, yet to come, will focus on possible solutions.

Updated 1/21 at 5:40 pm: While you're at it, read this post at Henry Jenkins's blog about the future of citizen / community journalism.

Updated 1/22 at 1:20 pm: Ed Baker has posted The Future of News - Part Two - Solutions, and the payoff is disappointingly grand. He proposes (1) that the federal government continue its 20th century policy of supplying large subsidies to institutions that employ professional journalists, and (2) that the subsidy consist of tax credits to offset the salaries of the journalists themselves. (2) ensures that the subsidy gets directed to the people who need it most (the writers and editors), rather than the people who need it least (the investors who are up to their eyeballs in debt), and it assumes, as is often the case these days, that news organizations can make an operating profit even in their current forms.

While we wait for the proposal to move to the top of the Congressional priority list, are there other suggestions? I have some, to come later.

The Surprising Virtues of Golf in Pittsburgh

I do not play golf. I have been known to flail at a golf ball in the company of friends, to enjoy the process, and to enjoy a drink in the clubhouse after a so-called "round" of golf. But I cannot be said ever to have "played" the game.

Pittsburgh, however, is golf-obsessed. Excellent golf courses abound, and both the local business community and the local non-profit community take full advantage. The "golf outing" is a staple of event calendars here. I have gotten accustomed to the practice, though as a newcomer a decade ago I found it absolutely mystifying. There are plenty of golfers in California, where I come from, and they play golf for business as well as for pleasure, but golf ranks nowhere near the top of the list of mandatory business pursuits on the West Coast, as it seems to here. Cycling -- now there's an entrepreneur's sport. In the Silicon Valley, it's all about cycling.

But I digress. The point of the post isn't really about the game of golf, but about the equipment of golf. As most golfers know, the sport relies on some serious high technology materials science. Via Chris at NullSpace, I learn today about Integran, a Toronto-based company with a Pittsburgh research facility that works on nanotechnology applications. Right now, the company is using nanotech in sports equipment, including golf clubs. (Chris wonders why he learns about the Pittsburgh connection by reading a Toronto publication, but I wonder how else he would learn about it.)

Integran, in other words, appears to be marrying two of Pittsburgh's special talents. The region is home to a lot of some world class materials scientists. (Not that this is evidence of world class anything, but don't forget that the precursor to Silly Putty was developed in Pittsburgh.) It's home to some world class golfers, golf courses, and thousands of golfers and golf fans.

I don't imagine that combining these things is actually part of Integran's strategy, and I don't even know whether any of the sports-equipment research is being done here. But it's fun to take these things and arrange them this way, because it lets me ask the following question: Is Pittsburghers' obsession with sports of all kinds worth something in the innovation economy after all? Pick your sport or outdoor activity. Pick R&D talent already present in Pittsburgh. Are there opportunities waiting for strategic combinations? Are there combinations underway that we aren't hearing enough about?

Not Completely Thrilled

I confess that my first reaction last night, at the end of the Steelers' victory over the Ravens, was dismay -- that the possibility of real conversations about the future of Pittsburgh's economy (jobs? population growth and loss? the mayoral election? fixing the morass of local bureaucracies? cleaning up the environment?) will be put on hold for two more weeks, while all of Pittsburgh whips itself into a frenzy about the Steelers possibly winning the Super Bowl for a sixth time.

It turns out that I'm not the only one thinking along these lines. Vannevar Bush, at WWVB, puts the point even more sharply:

For some reason, we teach our children to identify with this Steelers business in a way that they never identify with Bayer, Alcoa, Westinghouse, or any outfit that might someday employ them. Our schools have days where students wear Black And Gold™ and we indoctrinate them so they grow up to be Steelers fans, and - unless they move away to say, find work - our children grow up to support the taxes, subsidies, and give-aways that our politicians provide to this business. Good little Steelers fans!

There is very little new under the sun, and this maneuver isn't new either. Juvenal uses the phrase bread and circus to refer to the Roman practice of providing welfare and entertainment as a means of gaining political power through populism.

VB is clearly on to something, but he may overdo it just a bit. I'm not completely down on the whole Super Bowl thing. Pittsburgh (City of and region around) loves professional sports teams and identifies its cultural and political futures with those teams to a degree that may be unparalleled world-wide. In a meaningful and positive sense, Pittsburgh is going to the Super Bowl, and if Pittsburgh weren't, then this would be just another crappy, cold, grey winter in a region that sees only crappy, cold, grey winters, metaphorically speaking, even in June, July, and August. Have I mentioned that Spring Training is just around the corner?

The problem may not be that local politicians distract mindless voters with appeals to sports-based populism (Luke Steelerstahl, anyone?), but that the appeal is to the wrong sport. VB is right about the Steelers, I suspect, but wrong about the cultural and political prospects of aligning civic pride with sporting success.

Professional football is marketed as populist entertainment, but along with the more recently manufactured version of professional basketball, it is perhaps the least populist professional sport on our collective plates. The National Football League was a distinctly lesser professional sport in the national consciousness, especially compared to baseball (more on that in a moment), until the early 1970s, when Alvin Rozelle (Pete was only a nickname) married the sport to broadcast television. And what was the first NFL franchise to imprint itself on the national consciousness via broadcast television and Super Bowl success during the 1970s? You all know the answer to that one.

Pittsburghers around the world today feel the civic football populism of the Steel Curtain era -- recalling precisely the lowest point of the city's and region's 20th century history. Steelers bread and Steelers circuses keep the region mired in habits of thinking that recall the woe-is-us and damn-the-rest-of-the-world mindset bred of the demise of steel. We have to look out for ourselves, because no one else will look out for us. Read that recently? I have -- in the sports pages, in stories and columns quoting Steelers players and coaches? (It's practically tattooed on Hines Ward's forehead, much as I love how the guy plays.) With good reason. In the sports world, that's a great way to keep yourself motivated.

In the civic world, however, it's a formula for lack of ambition and lack of resistance to the interests of political elites. Vannevar is right on that point.

But the real metaphor for Pittsburgh's modern civic arc isn't the Steelers, but the Pirates. Baseball, not football, is this country's real populist entertainment, and it is baseball that has for decades -- and long before professional football -- provided the narrative thread for civic pride. If local politicians want to hitch their wagons to a cause that would elevate the ambitions of the city and the region, they'd align themselves with the Bucs, whose history throughout much of the 20th century was punctuated by spectacular success and inspiring ballplayers. Pittsburgh, city and team, was for much of the 20th century on top of the proverbial world.

At the end of the 20th century, of course, that (sporting) (civic) history was in tatters. Today, Pirates fans look back on a staggering sixteen consecutive losing seasons. I have no formula for baseball success, but until and unless the Pirates get competitive, I'd wager that Pittsburgh the city and region will remain stuck in its current low cultural gear. Imagine the phrase, "Pittsburgh is going to the World Series." (A few of you may be old enough to remember the last time that was meant something!)

What Would Vannevar Bush Do?

Beat the Cardinals, I hope. Go Steelers.

Updated at 1:30 pm: I'm not the only one noting the bread-and-circuses aspect to modern sports mania, not that I agree with the entirety of this column. Thanks to Chris Briem for the link.

Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet

Football fans bundling up for tonight's game may look back at the past week's temperatures and the forecast of almost endless snow, the hazardous roads and the threat of frostbite, and trot out that well-worn excuse for Pittsburgh's population decline: the weather. It's just that simple: The Sun Belt thrives and the Rust Belt ails because of the weather. Why live someplace cold, gray, rainy, snowy, icy and miserable when you could live sunkissed and coatless under Spanish moss or palms?

I used to rebut this with the names Boston and Chicago, but now there's an even more dramatic counterexample: Calgary.

Calgary is a place most of us would catagorize as climatologically uninhabitable. The average daily high temperature is below freezing December through February, and the daily mean temperature is below freezing November through March -- five months of the year. There is measurable snowfall from September through May. Just as air conditioning makes life bearable in Phoenix, the Plus 15 system of raised and heated walkways makes getting around Calgary on foot possible in winter. Oh, and the summers are rainy.

But Calgary is riding the oil boom seeping from the sands around Fort McMurray, Alberta, kicked into high gear by improved extraction techniques and trouble in the Middle East. The population of the Calgary Economic Region was under 1 million in 1996; it has been steadily growing by as much as 4% per year since then and is projected to approach 1.4 million by 2013. In 2007, Calgary and Edmonton (farther north and even bleaker) absorbed over 10,000 Canadians apiece from other provinces -- hip, temperate Vancouver garnered only about 3,600. And many of the new residents are young, making Calgary one of Canada's youngest cities with an average age in the 2006 Census of 35.7; Vancouver and romantic Montreal are comparatively elderly, with average ages over 39. (Figures from Calgary Economic Development, with help from Statistics Canada.)

Pittsburgh looks balmy by comparison. If you have a growing economy and plenty of jobs, people -- particularly the young, ambitious and hardy -- will put on their wool socks and zip up their parkas to join the party. A good salary will allow you to fly to the beach. I'll leave it to economic development experts to debate what Pittsburgh's biggest problems are, but as much as I hate shoveling, sniffling, static shocks, ice and mittens, I think it's time to quit pointing the finger (however numb and stiff) at the weather.

Pittsblog Expands By One

I'm delighted to announce that the Post-Gazette's loss is Pittsblog's gain. Samantha Bennett, the long-time Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist who took the paper's buyout offer last December, will be contributing at Pittsblog from time to time.

Samantha is relatively new to the Burghosphere, but she knows the blogosphere. She blogged her trip across Canada last summer at 2 Weeks in the Provinces. As the co-author of Pittsburgh: Smart City (published in 2007 and available here at amazon.com), she's familiar with many of the "future of Pittsburgh" themes that Pittsblog focuses on. Best of all from my point of view, she's an experienced professional writer who currently serves as the president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. (Though she has left the staff of the Post-Gazette, the paper will still carry her column.) Chris Briem and I are going to have to pick up our prose a bit.

Look for her posts soon.

Steelers Endorse Ravensthal Re-Election Bid???

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl claims that he is temporarily changing his name to "Steelerstahl" to avoid an unwanted association with Sunday's playoff opponent, the Baltimore Ravens. The Steelers (trademarked) logo now appears on the door to the Mayor's Office.

A reasonable person might infer that the Mayor is borrowing the massive popularity of the team in order to burnish his own image as a mayoral primary looms. That reasonable person might even conclude that the team has endorsed his candidacy outright.

So far as I know, the Steelers have not endorsed Mayor Luke. Nor does the Mayor claim that the team supports him.

But confusion is in the mind of the consumer. As someone who teaches and studies trademark law from time to time, I wonder whether the Mayor is just having some fun (fiddling while Rome burns, some critics might argue), or is crossing into territory patrolled by the NFL. Come playoff time, the National Football League and its franchises frown even more intensely than usual on appropriation of team colors, names, and trademarks by private interests not formally affiliated with or approved by the league.

Revenge of the Cupcake Class

It had to happen: Pittsburgh cupcakes have hit the big time, but in a way that only Pittsburghers could love.

A new MSN City Guide story about the Best Cupcakes in the Country includes the East End Chocolate Stout cupcake from Squirrel Hill-based Dozen Cupcakes as one of its eleven "most original (and delicious!) new cupcakes in America."

Steelers fans take heart; even the Cupcake Class bleeds black and gold. Beer in a cupcake. Only in Pittsburgh, I hope.

We now return to our regularly scheduled more-important-things-in-life than $3 cupcakes, already in progress.

Size Matters

The City of Toledo may have pulled ahead of the City of Pittsburgh in the 2007 Census Bureau estimate, as the P-G reported this morning, but can anyone doubt that Pittsburgh's historical, cultural, and economic footprint is more significant than that of the Glass Capital of the World, aka "Frog Town." (The city's unofficial website reports: "The city sits along the banks of the Maumee River, just north of what was once the Great Black Swamp, giving way to its other nickname, 'Frog Town.'"

Someone needs to put his foot down. (Dramatic pause follows; you know what's coming.) That foot is me.

If, as the paper reports, population numbers influence federal funds for certain local programs, then by all means the City should get aggressive about ensuring that Pittsburgh's numbers are as large as possible. (Remember the phrase "lies, damned lies, and statistics," attributed to Disraeli and Twain. Now is a time for statistics.) This is also as good an argument for bringing back Border Guard Bob as I've seen in a long time.

But should the City push the panic button because we're beaten (for the moment) by the city that lies just north of what was once the Great Black Swamp?

Toledo is home to exactly one professional sports team of any note, the minor league Mud Hens. Mud Hens? Frog Town? Great Black Swamp? Toledoans either have enormous courage or an irremediable self-image problem.

Pittsburgh is the source of five Super Bowl champions (soon to be six; I'll get on that bandwagon), Lemieux, Clemente, Wagner, the 20th century steel industry and the 19th century iron industry and is today the focal point of the Pittsburgh Diaspora -- as celebrated again in Bill Toland's column this morning.

Rather than focus on total population numbers -- which is game that Pittsburgh is not likely to win any time soon, even if it negotiates with the Census Bureau -- let Pittsburgh focus on numbers of jobs, on job creation, on numbers of people employed, on the quality of schools and other public services, and on pollution, crime, and poverty levels.

I'm sure that folks in Toledo are proud of their city, and no doubt rightly so. I also know folks formerly based in Toledo, who moved to Pittsburgh recently and are happy they did so. If size matters, Pittsburgh is a bigger place. A bigger pond, as it were, if you happen to be a frog.

China, Pittsburgh, and You

Based on the post title, maybe you thought that this post would be about the new Richard Chen restaurant, which has finally brought high end Chinese food to the city. (About Richard Chen, the food may be terrific, but more noteworthy is the characterization suggested by one friend who has eaten there: It's full of Pittsburgh's beautiful people.)

No, instead of a restaurant review I want to highlight something that the Post-Gazette inexplicably failed to cover:

University of Pittsburgh's Confucius Institute Named Confucius Institute of the Year

PITTSBURGH-The Chinese Ministry of Education's Office of Chinese Language Council International (Hanban) named the Asian Studies Center's Confucius Institute (CI-Pitt) at the University of Pittsburgh one of 20 Confucius Institutes of the Year during the organization's third conference, which was held in Beijing Dec. 9-11.

Established in May 2007, CI-Pitt was the first Confucius Institute in Pennsylvania. Since then, CI-Pitt has experienced rapid growth-expanding from two to 10 Chinese teachers, from three to 25 partner schools, from three to 69 Chinese classes, and from 49 to about 1,200 students.

Initiated by the State Council of China in 1987, the Confucius Institutes are a joint effort of 12 national-level ministries and commissions in China. Confucius Institutes promote and enhance the understanding of Chinese language and culture worldwide. The first Confucius Institute was established in Seoul, Korea in 2004. There are 295 Confucius Institutes in 78 countries and regions worldwide.

That text is copied verbatim from a press release issued in December by the University of Pittsburgh. The news is significant because it hints at something larger that is just about completely ignored in the local mainstream media.

The something larger is not this: Even to the casual observer, and using just about any benchmark one likes, Pittsburgh ranks pretty low among its peer regions when it comes to diversity metrics. I just came back from San Diego, and as always, while in California I was struck by the number and variety of colors that I saw on the street. When our university is trying to recruit new faculty, Pittsburgh's lack of racial and ethnic diversity is a huge obstacle to recruiting talented new people. It doesn't help that much of Pittsburgh's existing diversity is locked into what I once characterized as the Third Pittsburgh.

Instead, the something larger is that Pittsburgh has some tremendous assets when it comes to international communities here and connections with international communities abroad. I've written about this before, in the context of sports (or sport, as the phrase goes in other countries). Recognition of Pitt's Confucius Institute is just another example. We have a great and growing connection with the Chinese. Who knew? The fact that the mainstream media here ignored that award is just another data point that supports my basic argument. Internationalization here is valuable and important to those of us who happen to encounter it, but it's nearly invisible to everyone else.

In the context of my earlier internationalization post, one comment in particular made an excellent follow-on point: What's the message that Pittsburgh is trying to send to its citizens? Cities send messages. Directly and indirectly, through politics, sports, arts, and media, the culture wants people to do or to be things. New York wants people to be rich (according to the comment, and it makes sense to me). Cambridge (Massachusetts) wants people to be smart (again, this makes sense to me).

I hypothesize that Pittsburgh doesn't want its people to be internationalists. But what does Pittsburgh want its people to be?

Signs R Us

Most have seen this already, but maybe we can generate a few more sales for them. Mark, Liz, Greg and Jen have taken Pittsburgh's introspection to an area nowhere else has gone before. Read about the new book to come out of the Pittsburgh Signs Project. Available online from the CMU press. I had a few ideas for pictures I meant to take and send in to the project, but just never got around to it. Maybe if there is a Signs 2.0 project?

Actually I made that up about the uniqueness of the project. It might be, I just don't know. It probably is something that could only be conceived in Pittsburgh. Some find our obsession with analyzing ourselves and in particular our past a bit narcissistic (did I say that?), or at the very least counterproductive. Others just find it quaint. I actually think Signs comes as close as you can get to being a community Rorschach test. What do the signs mean to you? What do they say about us?

San Diego at Playoff Time

I'm in San Diego this week for a long-planned and much anticipated conference break from a Pittsburgh weather. By happy accident, this is the home town of the team that faces the Steelers next Sunday in a divisional playoff game.

Does anyone care? In San Diego, I mean.

I've spent a lot of time in San Diego in the past, so it's no surprise to me that playoff fever is, um, mostly missing here. I've seen a few cars with those silly NFL franchise logo flags (Chargers blue and gold in this case) hanging from the side windows. One downtown hotel has the Chargers' bolt logo splashed in lights on its side. But on the whole, San Diego goes about its usual sun-in-the-winter business. There are an awful lot of new shiny buildings here, and a lot of sun-splashed people who just don't seem to be passionate about very much. I haven't seen a single Chargers ball cap in two days, let alone a Chargers jersey. Scale that up, and you find that San Diegans aren't usually into the idea of San Diego. History and community? As in most of California, with few exceptions San Diego's history started yesterday; the future is what matters. San Diegans are mostly into the ideas of the water, the beach, and the sun. Which are beautiful, to be sure, and which are often reasons in themselves to keep coming back here. Which I do. Did I mention the water?

As different as the cities of Pittsburgh and San Diego are, their football teams are different, too. The Bolts have momentum, a fair amount of karma, and a hot quarterback on their side. The Steelers have an awesome defense and a bunch of question marks on offense. The mismatches mean that it's likely that the Chargers will give Pittsburgh a good game on Sunday, and the Bolts -- 2-0 in playoff games against the Steelers -- have a decent shot at pulling out a victory. But I'll stick with this prediction: Steelers 12 (no touchdowns; 4 field goals) - Chargers 10 (one defensive touchdown on an interception return, and one field goal).

The PT Cruiser that saved Detroit

The NYT has come to focus on the Pittsburgh story and the story of economic restructuring here with a contrast to what is happening up in Detroit. See: For Pittsburgh, There’s Life After Steel .

It's still pretty amazing to see what the folks in Detroit are looking at in the near term. We were once at the same level of denial they are at today. Take what the Detroit News printed as a letter to the editor earlier in the week. Major papers go to an effort to verify the letters they choose to publish..... or at least they used to. I will take it for granted that a letter in the Detroit News earlier in the week was sincere and legitimate, hard as that is to believe. A reader from California (a Detroit diasporan possibly?) wrote:

"...Although I live several thousand miles away, I wanted to let the people of Detroit and Michigan know you are not alone and that you are in my hopes and prayers. Every time I get into my PT Cruiser, I say a thank you to the people who designed and made such a fun and functional car. "

I really must be missing something? Mona Mondieu might would have more productive suggestions for the big three.

Just on the topic of letters to the editor. The Cleveland Plain Dealer had one yesterday titled: Will Cleveland ever beat Pittsburgh? with this quote:

"First, The Plain Dealer prints articles outlining the dynamic turnaround in the economy of Pittsburgh. Then the Browns lose their eighth straight game to the Steelers, and Bill Cowher puts a stop to any talk of his returning to Cleveland to coach the Browns (he was the town's top choice). And finally, the purchase of National City Bank by PNC Financial Services is completed."

It's not limited to football and banking. The letter does not mention Howard Hanna's recent purchase of Smythe, Cramer Co, one of Ohio's oldest and largest real estate firms. The first online comment there points out how Iggle-creep is encroaching on Cleveland as well. It all raises an almost metaphysical question. Even if your mailing address is Shaker Heights, if you shop at Giant Eagle, bank at PNC, and (assuming it's a playoff weekend) are watching the Steelers on TV... are you not living in Pittsburgh? Beyond all of that, what is remarkable is how fast Cleveland has acquired uniquely Pittsburgh levels of pessimism and self-doubt.

Murder in Pittsburgh

The biggest issue facing Pittsburgh in 2009 may not be its staggering public debt or its middling performance in the job creation sweepstakes. More important, the biggest issue may not be the Steelers' shot at the 2009 Super Bowl, the Pitt Panthers' No. 1 men's basketball ranking (above the fold on page 1 of this morning's Post-Gazette!), or the Penguins' impotent power play.

The biggest issue may be the sizeable and tragic jump in the city's homicide rate in 2008.

The Post-Gazette summarized the numbers the other day:

By Dec. 31, the Pittsburgh Police Bureau had investigated 79 homicides for
the year.

The number is unofficial and could fall to 73 when the bureau reclassifies
some deaths as accidental or justifiable, including three police-involved
shootings. But even the lower figure makes 2008 the city's bloodiest year since
1993, when there were 83 homicides. The number also represents a 28 percent
increase from 2007, when the city recorded 57 homicides.

This goes beyond mere crime statistics; even if you or your neighborhood wasn't touched directly by one of these events, your city feels the pain. My UC Berkeley colleague Jonathan Simon put the issue this way on a blog that's read mostly by fellow law professors:

Most of us are ready to leave Nixonland behind, and the current fiscal crisis of states like California may help provide the needed pressure to help walk politicians down from ever tougher criminal laws ... , but the road from fear to hope is shadowed by a ghost from the '60s that won't go away, the wave of violent crime in America's cities. Just as the dramatic decline in urban gun crime all over America during the 1990s helped produce a housing a boom in America's large cities (ok and some incautious lending as well), the recent uptick of homicides involving guns in some large cities
(including San Francisco and Oakland) is causing a growing panic among middle class families that have reinvested in cities. Since the 1960s this has been a race problem as well as a youth and violence problem. Half of all homicide victims in San Francisco last year were African American (mostly young men, as were their likely killers), while fewer then 10 percent of the city's current residents are. For forty years we have built white suburbs and predominantly black prisons and fear of gun homicide is, I would argue, an anchoring condition for both.

Read this feature in the San Francisco Chronicle to get a flavor of the despair that haunts these communities. I can't imagine that Pittburgh is much different. I suspect that conditions in Pittsburgh are worse.

In Pittsburgh, city/suburb conflict is a regular feature of debates about differential tax rates and city/county consolidation. Those debates often obscure a fundamental point about differential living and working conditions for all Pittsburghers, a point that the homicide rate highlights . If politicians and others really want to put the region on a sound financial footing, then they need to go beyond solving homicides, get into preventing them, and work to make all of Pittsburgh attractive and safe enough to all those who live in the City and those who would like to live there.

Investing and Entrepreneurship in 2009

When it comes to economic and technology futures, Pittsburgh isn't Palo Alto. The market for startup capital in the Silicon Valley is wider and deeper than it is in Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh investors have idiosyncrasies of their own. (They have an aversion to risk and an affection for short-term returns that is both curious and notorious for an early stage capital market.)

But connections between the two communities are strong, with individuals, firms, and money flowing back and forth more readily than outsiders might realize. So it's wise for Pittsburgh investors, technologists, and economic development firms (small fish) to pay close attention to what's happening on the West Coast (big fish).

Today's Times has a terrific summary of what the future looks like in Menlo Park. [Link here.] Are there likely to be similar developments in Pittsburgh? Excerpts from the Times:

Conversations with some of the leading venture capitalists about the types of companies that will receive some of the estimated $31 billion venture capital firms raised in 2008 offer a glimpse at the future of technology.

WEB 2.0 HEYDAY IS OVER Venture capitalists once poured money into Web sites that were free to users and that made money selling advertisements. If the site involved social networking, so much the better. But as growth in ad spending online cools and social networking becomes commonplace, the days of trying to be the next YouTube, Facebook or Yelp are over, said Jeremy Liew, managing director at Lightspeed Venture Partners.
. . .
Even Accel, an early investor in Facebook, might have turned that company away if it approached the firm today, said Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, an Accel partner. For Web sites that do not already have large audiences, “your business model may be just as plausible as it was 18 months ago, but we’re all more cautious about giving you a slug of money,” she said.

Instead, investors are looking for sites that make money in ways other than selling ads, like selling subscriptions or virtual goods. Selling 50-cent costumes for online avatars might not seem to be much of a revenue model, but pennies add up.

ENTERPRISE IS BACK Though investors are shifting their focus from the consumer to businesses, they are still reluctant to back makers of expensive software that manages data for companies.

“Big-ticket enterprise ideas that take $50 million to $100 million to get to market are going to be few and far between,” said Dana Stalder, a general partner at Matrix Partners. Instead, venture capitalists will invest in open-source software, Web-based software, Internet-based cloud computing and virtualization software that lets companies use less hardware to run applications. . . .

THE YEAR OF MOBILE? The iPhone and Apple App Store caught on with consumers in 2008, but investors are not convinced that selling ads or content like applications on mobile phones can make much money for them. More skeptical venture capitalists are sticking with what they know makes money in telecommunications, like carriers and makers of phones and accessories.

“Pure mobile content is overinvested, but hardware is underhyped,” said David Weiden, a partner at Khosla Ventures. Revenue from the iPhone and BlackBerry exceeds that of the entire mobile content market, he said. Battery Ventures is focusing on carriers, said Roger Lee, a general partner. His firm invested in MetroPCS, which went public in 2007, and last year put money into Pocket Communications, a wireless carrier in Texas that is expanding to the Northeast.

CLEAN TECH GETS REALISTIC Venture capitalists are still chasing clean technology. Through September, $3 billion was invested in technologies that create alternative energy and conserve power, up from $1.9 billion the year before, according to the National Venture Capital Association. But big, expensive projects like building factories to manufacture solar panels or biofuels are falling out of favor.

“The economic arguments for those businesses literally went upside down in a year,” said Paul Holland, the general partner in charge of the clean tech practice at Foundation Capital. Instead, some venture capitalists are looking at technologies that monitor energy demand, like software that tracks and regulates a building’s energy use.

PERSONALIZED HEALTH CARE Venture capitalists say one sector of the economy that technology has not yet transformed is personalized health care. Jennifer Fonstad, a managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, is looking at companies that use information about a person’s genetic code to offer predictive medical advice or preventive health services or devices. Internet companies that help patients, banks and insurance companies manage health savings accounts or help people find assisted-living homes for aging parents are other likely recipients of investors’ largess.

Where do the PG buyouts end?

According to the PG itself, Wednesday was the deadline for 195 PG staffers to accept a 2nd round of buyouts. 195 editorial staff must represent the bulk of the newsroom down there, not just those considering retirement. Except in dribs and drabs it sounds like we won't learn the complete list of takers for some time, if ever. Thursday Samantha Bennett wrote the semi-obligatory column saying goodbye. Because this second round covers so many folks in the PG newsroom, it may be surprising who takes the offer in the end.

Back to the original list of buyouts though. The public at large does not know who took the original PG buyout offer. Here is a list swiped verbatim from the Pittsburgh Media Scoops and Gossip Forum, so take it for what it is worth (i.e. unverified and potentially incorrect). The first round of takers for the PG's recent buyout offer included:

Phil Aselrod, David Bear, Dave Budinger, Arlene Burnett, Bill Campbell, Karen Franschini, Joe Grata, David Guo, Monica Haynes, Paul Meyer, Bill Moushey, Marlene Parrish, Dave Peters, Chris Rawson, Carolyn Reuter, Dan Rick, Cristina Rouvalis, Bob Smizik, Tom Sterling, Larry Walsh, Jim White

That list does not include book editor Bob Hoover which I had said earlier over on Nullspace was on the list. I had heard he had taken the offer from more than a couple sources, but it seems to not be the case. Some of that list list was written up in the CP last week along with some of Potter's discussion of what it all means for the ink distribution business.

Each departing journalist or editor has their own story I am sure. Between Grata and Bear the PG is losing both ends of the travel equation is one thing I notice. Others have filled long time beats mostly on their own. It will be telling to see what beats get filled as they reconstitute themselves down there. I still wonder what their real target the PG ownership wants to get down to. The goal may be to get to a breakeven level of operating expenses, but in the business world clearing out your payroll is often a precursor to getting a potential buyer onboard.

I have no idea if the PG will be sold, though the rumor it has been shopped around are not new. There isn't that much chance that Pittsburgh will soon become a no-newspaper city as Governing put it last week. The Trib, whether it survives on its owners largess or not, had its 5 year plan approved recently I hear... so whatever that level of support is, it does not seem to be an immediate issue. If the Trib wound up as the survivor in a one-newspaper city that support might actually wind up generating a decent investment return. That is if newspapers survive at all. If you didn't catch it, one of the biggest meta-media stories of last month was that both major Detroit newspapers are ending daily home delivery. It's not a new idea to think about whether the future of the newspaper industry exists only as nonprofits.

Explaining the Pittsburgh dialectic

Who am I? Why am I here? Points for those who remember hearing live that quote from a far greater American than I. Mike is on to something and has again asked me to contribute. I assume the long introduction isn’t necessary for most readers here. I have some more regular ramblings over on Null Space which I think will continue much as before. There is a method to Mike’s madness and he has a vision for Pittsblog 2.0. Along with others I hope, I will add my own musings from a self-admitted reactionary Yunzer. I think we will all share a vision of improving the greater community. Feel free to define that community as you wish. Improvement means both highlighting the positive, and let’s just call it constructive criticism of the negative.

Always judge the source and from me you will get thoughts admittedly biased as coming from someone born here, raised here and honestly expect the obituary to be written here as well. Hopefully not too soon for the latter. Taking the good, the bad and everything in between I believe in Pittsburgh’s future. Mike had no idea when he wrote the previous post that I am the owner of the domain Pittsburgh251.com, unused as it is for the moment and looking for suggestions. How to get to that future remains an ever changing mystery. It's a mystery because few places have such tensions between old and new, big and small, young and old, or just about any other division you care to make amongst us. Some of those tensions are, others more perceived. My take: Pittsburgh’s past is actually prologue in more ways than are obvious, but the path forward will have more than its fair share of chaos theory embedded in it along the way.

Chris Briem

Pittsburgh 251

As much as I enjoy a big fireworks show, I'm relieved to note that Pittsburgh's 250th birthday is officially over. Can we get back to the business of actually rebuilding the region?

I'm not really a curmudgeon, especially on New Year's Day, but I thought that Pittsburgh 250 -- the whole thing -- was a colossal missing of the mark. The entire enterprise was conceived as a marketing campaign to show off Pittsburgh to the rest of the country and the rest of the world, especially from a business development standpoint. See what a great place this is. We've been here for 25o years. Please, pretty please, move your company here and hire a bunch of Pittsburghers. Never mind the dysfunctional government, oppressive tax environment, or sky-high public debt.

Did it work? Look around. There's a casino going up on the North Shore. A hockey arena going up in the Lower Hill. Something called the North Shore Connector tunnelling its way toward Heinz Field. Children's Hospital in Lawrenceville is basically complete; an office tower and hotel Downtown is nearly so. East Liberty and its environs seem to have new hotels and restaurants coming out of their ears. A German beer hall will soon open at the South Side Works. Up in Cleveland, if you read the Plain-Dealer you might think that Pittsburgh envy is running at an all-time high. Detroit would give most of Michigan to be Pittsburgh right now.

Even if you think that all of these developments bode well for Pittsburgh -- and I don't -- how many of them have anything to do with Pittsburgh 250? My answer: Few of them. If I'm wrong, then in the comments, please show me where. The very best case for Pittsburgh 250, I think, is that it was a giant sleight-of-hand: While the region was off enjoying fireworks shows, movers-and-shakers were working behind the scenes, where few of us could see what's really going on, to shore up the economy. No one really wants to see the sausage being made, so we got to watch the cotton candy machine instead. So where's the beef? And why the secrecy?

I know the answer to the second question. Pittsburgh's leaders don't like the sunshine. (And you thought that our cloudy days were a product of nature!) I think that I know the answer to the first one. Pittsburgh is still on a sugar high, with little protein in sight.

But I don't like cotton candy much, either. Pittsburgh has a long and mostly glorious history as a city and region. 250 years' worth, to be precise. There was an opportunity over the last year to really acquaint the region with itself, to put the last 30 years A.S. (After-Steel) in a broader context and give all of the people of Pittsburgh a meaningful stake in what it means to live in this region, in this time. Pittsburghers are staggeringly complacent when it comes to the political future of the city and the region. There is no guarantee that a history lesson would shake any of that complacency, but it couldn't hurt. And everyone would like more reasons to feel good about living here, despite the current economy.

Quick: Name five communities in the Pittsburgh region that are named for individual Indians, Indian tribes, words, or cultures. Describe Pittsburgh's central role in the early development of federal authority. Explain the difference between and significance of Pittsburgh's two nicknames: Iron City and Steel City. Discuss three shameful episodes or major tragedies in Pittsburgh's past. Identify five world-class artists (visual, performing, or musical arts) who were born and raised in Pittsburgh. Name three of Pittsburgh's Sister Cities and explain why they are on the Sister City list.

It's not too late to do any of that, of course, but celebrating Pittsburgh's birthday is no longer an excuse.

Answers another time -- or do the research and post thoughts in the comments.