Newspapering, old school

You get old, you knock around, and you think you know your town inside and out. That’s especially true if you consider yourself a newsie -- you’re supposed to just know things. But I didn’t know about The Valley Mirror until I became elderly.

Despite having lived and worked within four miles of the Mon River all these years, I hadn’t seen it or heard of it until 2012. Now, I consider it one of the most authentic local newspapers around.

A weekly, publishing on Thursdays, the Mirror is stuffed with local goodies including government news, lots of readers’ photos, scholastic sports, notable wedding anniversaries, a page of puzzles, a two-page ‘worship schedule” of church events and bowling leagues scores. This isn’t 60 Minutes or the Washington Post, but it’s very much the kind of information that regular people value, from right down the street.

And wouldn’t you know -- The Valley Mirror actually is headquartered on Main Street, in Munhall.

It might be bad form to write about one publication when you’re publishing in a different one, but Patch and the Mirror are not really competitors, so no harm done. Patch exists only online and it’s free. The Mirror is produced only on paper and is sold for 50 cents a copy. The Mirror's circulation is about 5,000, with weekly readership estimated at 12,000. Some 400 families subscribe by mail.  

If you were documenting the story of The Valley Mirror, you’d be inclined to film it in black-and-white because it has a sort of last-century quality to it, though in a very good way. No website. No electronic online version with annoying ads flying at you from the margins. No dopey surveys from healthcare providers. Then, too, the newspaper actually is black and white -- one color on honest newsprint with a few touches of Pantone 279 blue for highlights.

For many Pittsburghers, a true “paper” newspaper is just the thing for passing around to friends and family, clipping out articles to share, and hoarding for the grandkids.

The Mirror began publication in 1981 and increased its circulation in 1999 when it merged with the old Braddock Free Press. Today, it is owned and very decisively managed by managing editor Marilyn Schiavoni, a kindly, grandmotherly woman with a startlingly wicked sense of humor. She lives in Swissvale.

The paper claims a 19-square-mile readership area and covers events in the Steel Valley towns of Homestead, West Homestead, West Mifflin and Whitaker. It also embraces the Woodland Hills communities of Braddock, Braddock Hills, Chalfant, Churchill, East Pittsburgh, Forest Hills, North Braddock, Rankin, Swissvale and Turtle Creek. Think about it -- that’s really, really big and highly diverse.

And that’s what makes it interesting -- news of Churchill and Braddock and Whitaker all side-by-side.

I was fortunate to work for them for a while until something got in the way. In just two months there was:

* a story about council member Darrell Rapp in Swissvale rhapsodizing about a “service philosophy” in the collection of junk tires

* a report about third graders in Munhall sitting in for that town’s elected officials and doing a sterling job of running the monthly meeting

* news of a council meeting where Churchill residents self-congratulated themselves about a bulletin board in their “nature sanctuary” then turned to plotting the details of a night-time death squad to eradicate tulip-nibbling deer in their backyards.

You can’t, as they say, make this stuff up. But you’re also no proper writer if you can't competently report it in 500 words or less.

William McCloskey, a has-been news reporter, lives in Regent Square. He’s at wmpgh@msn.com.