Don't Look Now: Journalism!

For months, I have been on the brink of cancelling my print subscription to the Post-Gazette.  Not because I like to read the paper on the Web, for free; I don't (like to, or read it there, generally).  But because aside from the Sports section -- which offers me almost nothing, as a soccer fan -- the paper is usually almost devoid of locally-generated journalism.  Substance.

But twice -- twice! -- in the last couple of weeks I have opened the morning news and found real journalism there, the sort of thing that restores my faith in the local Fourth Estate, even if only briefly. 

Rich Lord's recent series on the local Wizards of Oz -- the lever-pulling men behind the curtain of Pittsburgh politics and economic development -- was courageous, even if it was illuminating more for what those men did not say than for what they did (Chad Hermann illustrated the point in his typically clear and pointed way).

And Chuck Finder's work on Sunday on brain injuries in youth sports, particularly in the local church of football, took a long-simmering national story about injuries in professional sport [I posted about this topic a year ago] and brought it home, literally, in a wonderfully but tragically vivid way. 

The subscription stays.

Please, sir, I want some more.