Editorial: Sharing information should be the default
Nothing would be easier than to look at a bar fight involving police officers as an opportunity to talk about bad behavior by law enforcement. But that story isn’t written yet. Charges have been filed against Pittsburgh Det. Richard L. Dilimone Jr., 36, of Adams Township, Butler County, in connection...
Laurels & lances: Safety & SATs
Laurel: To building on support. Pittsburgh Action Against Rape is closing its South Side office for about a month — not to pause its vital mission but to reinforce it. Thanks to a $137,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, the organization is implementing security and...
Editorial: AI regulation learns from social media mistakes
Twenty years ago, no one really knew where social media was going to go. Facebook had just dropped “The” from its name. It was not yet ubiquitous. It was only beginning to move beyond college campuses and into broader public use. By 2006, it opened the doors wide. There were...
Editorial: Opening primaries isn’t simple, but it deserves debate
Pennsylvanians are accustomed to a primary that might not reveal how they feel. After all, Pennsylvania may be a critical state in presidential elections, yet its primary falls late in the season. That means that by the time Democrats and Republicans head to the polls for a presidential primary every...
Editorial: The cure for congressional pork
Ham is pork cured in a brine of water, salt and sugar. The process was meant to preserve the meat and make it last longer. But it also made it taste better. What about a different kind of pork? “Pork barrel” spending takes its name from those same preserved provisions....
Editorial: Why do Americans think their neighbors are ‘bad’ people?
We Americans are a proud bunch. We are a nation founded on the principles of freedom and the rule of law, and our commitment to these values has propelled us to new heights and made us the leader of the free world. But in recent years, as our politics and...
Editorial: Hunger takes a bite out of college
There are things you think about a college student needing to pay for at school. The obvious cost is the tuition. The average cost of two semesters at a Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education school — the most affordable four-year institutions in the state — comes in at just...
Editorial: Pittsburgh’s math problems are transparency issues
All over the country, people are pulling their financial information together, assembling receipts and taking everything to a qualified professional who can help make sense of the expenses, the income, the deductions, the taxes paid and the taxes due. Tax season can be stressful, but it serves an important purpose....
Laurels & lances: Service & sacrifice
Laurel: To redding up. Fox Chapel senior Kabeer Chopra and the volunteers behind Green Bridge 412 are proving that cleaning up the environment can start with one person noticing a problem and doing something about it. What began after Chopra saw the amount of plastic waste generated during a summer...
Editorial: Why answers help communities heal
When the unexpected occurs, we want to know why. We want to know how it happened. And we want to know what can be done to stop it from happening again. On April 22, 2022, an explosion ripped through a home on Hialeah Drive in Plum, destroying the house and...
Editorial: Creative partnerships can support nonprofits and city needs
The old YWCA building on Downtown Pittsburgh’s Wood Street is not the kind of property that inspires civic pride. It is what Point Park University’s Ted Black described as “quite frankly a bit of an eyesore.” Few people walking through Downtown would disagree. Vacant buildings rarely improve with age. But...
Editorial: Punching the overtime clock adds up
Westmoreland County has an overtime problem. TribLive reporting shows regular reliance on overtime has pushed some employees’ earnings far beyond their base salaries. In 2025 alone, county workers made more than $7.2 million in overtime. The largest share went to the prison, where overtime exceeded $2.2 million. Dispatchers at the...
Editorial: What Texas tells us about the 2026 midterms
The early political signals emerging from Texas may offer a revealing preview of the national mood heading into the 2026 midterm elections. While one state rarely defines the entire political landscape, Texas often serves as an important barometer for the broader tensions shaping American politics today: polarization, ideological intensity and...
Editorial: War is never as far away as it seems
When we watch war unfold on television, there is fear and uncertainty. But there also can be the detachment of distance. It is not a comfort, but it can be insulating to know what is happening is so far away. That is not true for everyone. Even neighbors in Western...
Editorial: Hatred finds a microphone
Three things collided in Pittsburgh this week: hatred, technology and infrastructure. The result was antisemitic threats against Mayor Corey O’Connor broadcast over a public safety radio channel used by police and emergency responders. O’Connor comes from a diverse background. His late father was Catholic, his late mother Jewish. He has...
Laurels & lances: Raptors & rodents
Laurel: To flying high. The Tarentum Bridge carries about 36,000 vehicles a day across the Allegheny River. Soon it will also carry the weight of a $97.5 million rehabilitation project. But before construction begins in 2027, planners are making sure another set of residents is considered: the peregrine falcons nesting...
Editorial: How did Pittsburgh Regional Transit calculate CEO’s bonus?
On Friday, the board of Pittsburgh Regional Transit unanimously approved a $55,000 bonus for CEO Katharine Kelleman. The issue is not that the transportation authority came off a financially difficult year. It is not that $55,000 is a lot of money when the organization had to use $100 million in...
Editorial: The boundary around medical privacy
On Monday, Chief U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon denied a Department of Justice request to force UPMC to turn over records for minor patients who received gender-affirming care. In doing so, she did not mince words about the federal government’s approach. “Left to its devices, the DOJ would trample states’...
Editorial: Safety tools need safety rules
In the event of an emergency, it is important to have the best information possible. You can hear that in the recordings of 911 calls when dispatchers calmly try to get the whos and whats and hows from people dealing with medical events, accidents or crimes. It still leaves holes...
Editorial: Spirit Airlines may recover. Will local airports?
Spirit Airlines has been experiencing turbulence. In November 2024, the budget carrier filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Ten months later, the company filed again. This week, Spirit’s parent company — Spirit Aviation Holdings — announced it expects to exit bankruptcy within months, having come to a preliminary agreement with lenders...
Editorial: Courthouse turnover shouldn’t delay critical cases
A capital case in Allegheny County may be delayed because another prosecutor assigned to it is leaving the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office. Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Berosh said during a status conference Monday that she was leaving the prosecutor’s office. She was not the first. Her departure makes her...
Editorial: Alcoa’s sales for data centers signal new industrial revolution
It can be hard to understand in a world of soda cans and smartphones that there was a time when aluminum was rarer than diamonds. That changed in Southwestern Pennsylvania. It wasn’t that aluminum was scarce in the earth. It was that turning it into usable metal was nearly impossible....
Laurels & lances: Competition & consequences
Laurel: To bringing home the gold. Having Western Pennsylvania represented in the Olympics is nothing new. There is a long history of athletes from across the region taking up the mantle of Team USA — or showing up for other nations. Pittsburgh Penguins stars such as Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby...
Editorial: The private price of public property
Real estate development would be much easier if everyone could get land for free — or close to it. Of course there are the expenses of design, site work and construction. There may be hurdles for permits and approvals. But the cost of land is often the biggest obstacle. As...
Editorial: Supreme Court tariff ruling spotlights local government limbo
Tariffs have created economic confusion over the past year. Some don’t really understand what they are or how they impact prices in the U.S. Some support them as an American trade policy even if they do have an impact at home. For many — including government agencies — they have...
