Pittsburgh 2018.
Back in 1992 I was working as an archaeologist for a Philadelphia-based consulting firm. I had been spending a lot of time that summer in Southwestern Pennsylvania doing research to write a regional historic context for a large transportation project.
Earlier that year, both of Pittsburgh’s newspapers were impacted by striking delivery drivers. One of the papers, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, didn’t want to fade into obscurity in these waning days of analog publication and delivery. To try and keep attention focused on itself and on the news, the Post-Gazette hired town criers to stand in downtown Pittsburgh and read the news. It was more public relations stunt than news delivery, but it sounded like a really interesting story that also appealed to the historian and folklorist in me.
Besides working as an archaeologist and finishing my Penn PhD coursework, I also was writing for several newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer. One day I called my editor and told her that I had been spending a lot of time just south of Pittsburgh and I pitched writing a story about the town criers. She liked it and she gave me the green light to run with my idea. Late one morning, I hopped in my car after grabbing my reporter’s notebook and tape recorder and headed north, from the Monongahela River Valley to downtown Pittsburgh. The Inquirer published my article on Pittsburgh’s town criers on September 1, 1992.
© 2018 D.S. Rotenstein