Paper drops another day; Sinclair starts morning news

January 14, 2021 Off By Eric O'Brien

Friday printed editions of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will end with the February 26 edition. That will leave the paper with just two days of print editions per week. Since 2018, the paper has been slowly moving to an all digital format and cut two days of print and delivery in 2018 and two more in 2019.


Sinclair Broadcast Group will begin a new national broadcast on its stations come Monday, January 18. “The National Desk” hosted by Jan Jeffcoat will air from 7:00 – 9:00 a.m. on WPGH-TV (53). Sinclair not only owns WPGH, but also WPNT-TV (22) locally.

The program will air from the company’s Hunt Valley, Maryland headquarters and feature reports from their stations across the country. However, it’s been years since WPGH had its own news room after an attempt to bring a 10:00 p.m. newscast to the region for about 10 years. Many attribute the failure to the insistence that stations carry their “News Central” which came from the same headquarters. Soon after, WPXI-TV has had a news share agreement with WPGH.

But Sinclair also says this won’t be anything like “News Central” as it will draw from their local stations. Sinclair stations with news departments will do local weather drops; markets without a news operation will see more news related items from Hunt Valley. Unlike “News Central”, “The National Desk” is not intended to include a political slant nor will it have “fluff”.