Pittsburgh Progress

Pittsburgh Progress is a worker- and reader-owned news cooperative based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, covering working-class communities across Western Pennsylvania. It was established by former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette journalists who are members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, together with community supporters, after the Post-Gazette's owners announced in January 2026 that the newspaper would close. The founders first organized as the Pittsburgh Alliance for People-Empowered Reporting and then decided to pursue a worker- and community-owned daily news outlet structured as a multistakeholder cooperative. It began publishing on July 27, 2026 with eighteen founding members. Ownership is divided between worker-members and reader-members, a majority of board seats go to workers, and the journalists retain all editorial decision-making power. The Keystone Development Center, a Pennsylvania cooperative development organization, helped the group set up the co-op. Reader-members join for a one-time fee, and reported funding comes from advertisers, subscribers, reader-members and investors including labor unions.