John Craig and the Future of Pittsburgh

The passing last week of John Craig, long-time editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, called out all kinds of poignant memories of the man and his work. What a great man he was, etc. etc. I had the good fortune to have lunch with him, just once, not long after we tangled on this blog over a P-G piece that he wrote on public art in Pittsburgh. My initial critique of his op-ed is here, his last word on the subject is here, and be sure to check the comments to both posts.

From limited experience, I can confirm that John Craig was a handful of a personality, full of knowledge, opinions, and the wit and courage to share them without calculating too much, outwardly, over what other people thought. In a nutshell, John Craig was a newspaperman of the old school, sort of a real-life and bigger-than-life version of the fictional Lou "I hate spunk" Grant. At our lunch, we didn't talk about public art; we talked mostly about the Internet and social media. He wanted me to help explain to him how to use it in connection with the Regional Indicators project.

That conversation, now three years old, reminds me that John Craig's most important legacy may not be his record in hiring and supporting the people who built the Post-Gazette and other papers over the last 30 years, or his work behind the scenes in supporting some of the better public initiatives around the city. His legacy may lie in how he viewed the community where he lived, and how is vision is sitting there -- waiting to be picked up and extended. The following passage in the P-G's obit caught my eye:

One of the things that struck him about the Post-Gazette upon arrival was how much it seemed in the mid-1970s like Pittsburgh itself: rather insular, set in its ways, lacking vision.

"He made it clear -- not necessarily diplomatically always -- that he wanted to shake the place up. He was a really formidable presence in the newsroom," recalled Michael McGough, a Los Angeles Times senior editorial writer who worked closely with Mr. Craig overseeing the Post-Gazette's editorial pages.

Within a short matter of time, the Post-Gazette had a lot more people with non-Pittsburgh accents, some of them foreign. It had more minorities. Different departments of the newspaper were forced to plan and discuss with one another in a way they never had.

And importantly for readers, it meant more ambitious local news coverage, including investigative journalism on powerful figures such as Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Rolf Larsen and Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, whom he relished taking on when they filed libel suits against the newspaper.

Business reporting no longer was tied to press releases. The "women's pages" took on a more modern, lifestyle-oriented tone, as had become the norm at newspapers in bigger cities.

...

"He was thinking out of the box before people knew there was a box," said Post-Gazette columnist Reg Henry, an Australian hired by Mr. Craig in 1978. "He was a contrarian, and very challenging -- and therefore irritating -- but all in the pursuit of excellence."

The not-so-hidden heroes of this story are the members of the Block family, who hired John Craig and backed him up; they let John Craig run with his vision. But if the Blocks were the backstop, John Craig provided just about everything else. John Craig was the very model for what Pittsburgh needed then, when he arrived, and what it still needs today: leaders with knowledge, opinions, and the courage to share them. Not (just) in the mainstream media, but throughout Pittsburgh's public life - media, education, business, government, nonprofits.

Is Pittsburgh less insular, less set in its ways, and more "visionary" than it was when John Craig arrived? Sure. But by how much? How much of Pittsburgh's new vision (can cities really have vision?) is the corporate/statist product of city government, the Allegheny Conference, and VisitPittsburgh? How much of the vision is the Kumbaya output of "regional visioning" projects and collective conversations? It is right and fun to talk about ourselves (the latter two groups), and a lot of tangible good can come out of the CEO-culture (the first three groups), at least when you have the right kind of CEOs. But the John Craigs of the world, individuals who inspire the rest of us to work better and contribute more, don't fit into either category.

You might call them Pittsburgh's new leaders, as I tried to here about six months ago. From the Cupcake Class to the head of the class, one might say. I don't know whether or John Craig enjoyed a good cupcake, but he was no member of the Cupcake Class. Or you might call them Pittsburgh's new "characters," who were the subjects of a different recent post. Calling John Craig a "character" significantly undervalues his contributions. John Craig had spunk. The Pittsburgh region is missing those people right now.

Pittsburgh Numeracy

Two things that I read today:

Chris Briem - "Parking fines doubled.... city expects revenue to double. There is this little thing called price elasticity."

The Economist - describing a research paper that seeks to explain why some subprime mortgage borrowers defaulted on their loans, and others did not - "A trio of economists set out to find out what differentiated those borrowers who did not keep up with their payments from the rest. Their answer, according to a new working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, is simple: numeracy. . . . Even accounting for a host of differences between people—including attitudes to risk, income levels and credit scores—those who fell behind on their mortgages were noticeably less numerate than those who kept up with their payments in the same overall circumstances."

Surely the juxtaposition is just an entertaining coincidence.

Pittsburgh Withdrawal

I'm in Pittsburgh detox.

I've been traveling a lot over the last few months -- both here and (just recently) abroad -- and in my travels I have utterly and completely failed to hear any of the Pittsburgh props that I've been accustomed to over the last decade. From Washington, DC to New York to Boston to London, introducing myself this Spring as a Pittsburgh resident has yielded precisely zero "I've heard that Pittsburgh is a nice / neat / great place" comments. I haven't picked up anything negative, either. In January, in the Silicon Valley, the desk clerk at my hotel volunteered that he had heard that Pittsburgh is wonderful. Since then, in my experience Pittsburgh has quickly and quietly become ... a non-person.

This adds up to precisely nothing, because it's one anecdote involving one person, except that the positive feedback and reinforcement about the region that encouraged me to keep blogging over the last six years has faded. I'm no less of a Pittsburgh partisan, and I am not suspending the blog, but I'm looking for Pittsburgh economic development, arts, and tech tidbits a bit less enthusiastically these days. Let us not say that I stopped drinking the Kool-Aid (I would love to banish that particular metaphor, by the way; I remember its origins all too well), but let us say that my eyeglasses, which may have been a bit rose-colored at times, have me seeing clearly these days.

The NHL playoffs, and the weird frenzy that Pittsburgh whipped itself into over the possibility of another Stanley Cup, didn't help. I have never followed ice hockey (I grew up in California, after all, long before the marketing regime that is the San Jose Sharks were invented), don't understand ice hockey, and am not impressed by the enthusiasm and intensity that "playoff hockey" allegedly brings. During the last Winter Olympics, I got into one ice-based team sport and one team in particular: the Norwegian curlers. (I liked their pants. As tragic heroes, competitively, the Swedes wrenched my gut.) My opinion on the one truly major Pittsburgh issue of this Spring is this: The Igloo should go. It is not the Pantheon; it is not Penn Station. It is an eyesore. The space occupied by that building represents an opportunity to re-create and re-invent a big slice of Pittsburgh's urban fabric. (Of course, given Pittsburgh's history with redevelopment over the last 50 years, the city might well blow its big chance.) But that's just me.

I'm not knocking Pittsburgh parochialism. Pittsburgh's low cost of living, due largely to the fact that so few people want to move here, means that the city is again a "most livable" place, and while we pat ourselves on the back over that notice, other places -- places that are genuinely far more cosmpolitan than Pittsburgh has ever been -- display their fair share of parochialism, too. I just came back from London, and the tribal quality of London's neighborhoods (as well as the rest of England) was in rare form over the last week, between the FA Cup final a week ago Saturday (Chelsea 1 - Portsmouth 0) and the Football League Championship Play-Off Final the day before yesterday (Blackpool 3 – Cardiff City 2). Let's just say that you don't want to get on the Tube with a bunch of football fans after their side has lost a final, especially if you are wearing the wrong color shirt.

The Blackpool - Cardiff City match was so compelling, both as sport and as urban storyline (Blackpool hasn't played in England's top division since 1971, and its stadium holds just over 12,000 people) that it deserves a further look. If American sports wants to produce something really interesting, Major League Baseball should relegate to Class AAA the bottom team in each division in the National League and the American League at the end of the season, and have a playoff for those six spots among the top twelve teams in Class AAA. This wouldn't work today, of course, because of affiliate relationships. But that sort of thing could be adjusted; details would have to be worked out. It would be a kick in the pants for the Pirates to be sent down -- something that the team richly needs and deserves -- and for the Buffalo Bisons, say, to be called up.

Maybe that would get people talking to me again about what kind of place they think Pittsburgh is.

Where's Pittsblog?

Since March 31, I've had meetings or conferences in five states plus the District of Columbia, and I've been on the ground (on foot, in a vehicle, or both) in twelve states plus DC. You may recall that I teach at Pitt. Spring classes are over, but the only ones I missed were the ones cancelled by the university in February. And I made those up. So there hasn't been much time to blog.

Fortunately for me, summer is just about here. Travel season begins!