McKeesport Community Newsroom grateful for early holiday gift that will keep it operating for another year

Martha Rial and her McKeesport Community Newsroom participants and friends will celebrate the holiday season this Thursday. The occasion, though, will fete something much bigger for the project: funding that will keep it running for another year.

Point Park University had sponsored the program for five years with help from the Allegheny and Pittsburgh foundations. That ended this summer, and it seemed as if that would be it for the Tube City Writers and the Mon Valley Photographers Collective.

Rial looked for funders through these past three-plus months to keep it going. Then last month an anonymous McKeesport donor stepped up after reading about the closure in the Mon Valley Independent.

“I was still working at this. I just wasn’t sure what I was going to do,” Rial said. “This came as a wonderful surprise. I was shocked [and] so glad people believe in our work.”

It also has a new home, the Carnegie Library of McKeesport.

For Rial, the new home is not unfamiliar. Her project has partnered with the library many times, and in fact what all thought would be its writers group’s last event, McKeesport Love Stories, took place there.  She said the library and its staff welcomed her from day one and “made me feel at home.”

“The first day I was in McKeesport I walked in and introduced myself,” Rial said.  “Programs come and go — consistency is so important. We need to make a commitment to these folks. Progress moves at the speed of trust. I’ve worked really hard to develop meaningful relationships there.”

The there means all of McKeesport, from the library to its schools to its nonprofit organizations to its city government. “This is a business of relationships, writing and photography,” she said. “You are constantly developing new relationships and honoring your past and honoring your old friends as well as new. It’s the key to success.”

Right now about 10 to 16 people, some from outside of McKeesport, take part in the writers and photographers groups, which include some overlap. “The donor wants to keep both going,” Rial said, and the library has received some funding, too, for community events.  “They want to help the people of McKeesport. They believe our teaching them how to share information responsibly is important.”

An acclaimed photographer who won a 1998 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography with her photographs of Rwanda and Burundi conflicts, Rial worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the St. Petersburg Times, the Fort Pierce [Florida] Tribune and the Journal Newspapers in Alexandria, Virginia, and knows that last part well. In addition, she says, “Libraries are our best partners in building civic engagement and fighting disinformation.”

The writers group meets once a month, and the photographers get together bimonthly for photo shoots, with ongoing online feedback sessions about their work. The work spans events, activities, opportunities and issues in McKeesport and beyond. “They’re always working on something,” said Rial, who has directed the program on a part-time basis while also maintaining her own photography work. “They have many different interests,” she said. “I encourage them to photograph people. I’m always pushing them to photograph the world around them. They know it better than anyone.”

Rial works with McKeesport Area High School’s Red and Blue newspaper staff and its adviser, Kerri Bryer, an effort that started with prior adviser Bonnie Butler, and she is grateful to continue that, too. She has brought speakers in for the students to interview, helped them with their reporting, interviewing, writing and photography skills.  Currently Rial is working on adding a podcast studio there this year for them.

Last week Rial brought Casey Giorgi, a freelance podcast producer now living in Pittsburgh, to talk to the students and Bryer about her love for audio storytelling. She’s worked for the Wall Street Journal, Audioboom Lifehacker, Wondery and the Los Angeles Times, and Slate Studios, all in as a producer and writer.

As Bryer and her principal look for the physical space to locate the studio, Rial with help from experienced podcasters like Giorgi will help the students build experience — defining their audience, learning audio interviewing skills, writing the scripts and working on the necessary technical skills.

The effort to bring that studio to McKeesport Area High School is not surprising to Bryer, who knew Rial would not quit looking for ways to continue working in McKeesport.  

The 20-year teacher said Rial brings to her “things I would never have dreamt of doing,” and she is a willing partner. McKeesport Area School District struggles with its budget, so the McKeesport Community Newsroom finding the resources to fund and build it means it will cost the school district nothing. “I need to make sure this happens. I am going to consider this my legacy to leave to the next person who takes my place,” said Bryer, who doesn’t have plans to retire soon.

She wrote “scathing letters” to Point Park leaders when she heard about the program closure because the newsroom-high school newspaper partnership meant that much to her. She only received a response from Center for Media Innovation Director and Assistant Vice President Andy Conte.

Bryer is grateful for Rial’s help the past three years, although first she hesitated as she took over advising from Butler, who had decided to retire. “I kept turning [Rial] down because I didn’t feel comfortable in what I was doing,” she said. She has taught English at the high school for most of her 19-plus years there but not journalism.

Rial persisted, and Bryer said the newspaper, which just turned 100 years old, has come far with her help. It started with teaching students to use cameras, which Rial brought to the school. Since then the staff has gone on multiple photo shoots and field trips, including a high school media day at Point Park. The limited newspaper budget would have precluded those.

“She encourages the students to think outside the box, be creative and use their voices, know that they do have a voice,” Bryer said. “She encourages them to be the future of media, journalism, whatever it is they are striving to be.”  And even if they don’t want to go into journalism, “she has given them confidence.”

The newspaper adviser said Rial has been very gracious with her expertise and humble. Bryer said she discovered on her own about Rial’s Pulitzer Prize. “When I found out, I told her I feel that I am in a room with a celebrity. She’s brought a lot of her knowledge and expertise.”

The students have had standing invitations to project events, and Bryer said those get them involved in the community and more practice. The efforts get the teenagers outside their comfort zones. A good example: the “What Makes McKeesport McKeesport” photo shoot last year. The students realized McKeesport’s rich history, which the teacher knows because her husband grew up there. “They told me, ‘I never knew that people felt this way about their town,’” she said. “That brings them pride, too. …  I love this community. I love these kids.

“[Rial] extends my curriculum. I couldn’t be more proud of my students because they have learned so much from her.”

Jim Busch, who joined the writers group right after it started and has been a prolific contributor, shares Bryer’s support. A lifelong White Oak resident, three years ago he lost his wife of 50-plus years to pancreatic cancer, and the group helps him get out and meet people.

“What I really enjoy about the group is the diversity of it,” he said. “Men, women, Black, white [and] an autistic young woman. I’m an old white guy from White Oak. That is what my circle looks like. I enjoy meeting all these people and hearing different viewpoints.”

The writing he and the others contribute also helps provide a different view of McKeesport and the Mon Valley. “For the community, this area gets such a bum rap. I know people from all over the city,” Busch said. “They ask me, ‘Aren’t you afraid there?  [They hear about] all the drugs and shootings and murders?’ I say no! The stories that have been published by the community newsroom, most of them have been about positive aspects of the community. I think that is so important. The only time McKeesport makes the 6 p.m. news is when someone gets gunned down. The media don’t cover the cool things.”

Busch and the others have, and his work has been published beyond the group’s site as he has worked as a freelance journalist for Trib Total Media and the Mon Valley Independent and elsewhere. He writes consistently now for the MVI, covering council meetings in Port Vue and Glassport and writing nature columns and features. The amateur historian just wrote about Olive Thomas, a silent film star from Charleroi, and the Ringgold Calvary that kept a confederate militia at bay in West Virginia. It’s the namesake for Ringgold High School.

The Tube City Writers’ work he is the most proud of is his 365 contributions to the Corona Diaries, an effort Rial started during the pandemic. “Martha suggested we write 800 words [for the entries], and that length just felt right,” he said. “We had no real rules, no guidelines. I tend to write long. Going through COVID and my wife going through treatment for pancreatic cancer then, I wrote about groundhogs in my backyard, going shopping. … I tend to be an overachiever. People read it all throughout the country.”

Busch started his writing career at the former Daily News while attending Penn State’s McKeesport campus and then the University of Pittsburgh. He worked in advertising sales for years, including at the Yellow Pages, before he landed at the Pennysaver. Busch remained its training director when Trib Total Media acquired it and also wrote advertorials, a popular feature then.  He also wrote feature stories and said he published 100 pieces before his career there ended in January 2015.  

He likes the program’s public events and Rial’s workshop sessions and guest speakers. And he’s contributed, too. “I was attracted to the training thing because I like helping people,” Busch said. “I’ve been able to help less experienced people a little bit.”

Both Bryer and Busch said they look forward to continuing the program’s prior activities and new ones.

Rial said those include an online January program with sports photographer Jared Wickerham and civic education efforts, with participants going to a public meeting and learning how to understand those and reporting on them.  She is working on a program with Kelly Doyle, whom she calls an amazing woman, and her McKeesport-based nonprofit, Mission: Agape that resolves to end food security and strengthen families.

Bryer said Rial’s program has helped her students beyond journalism, whom she emphasized are good, well-mannered young people.

“Where I see us going, I hope we influence others and make positive changes,” she said, “and hopefully the students can bring back a more positive influential opinion of McKeesport through their dealings. I want them to go out in public and realize when they interview somebody that it extends beyond the newspaper. 

“I tell them every town has its own political problems. I tell them you kids have the ability to make changes, [even though] they may not see them right off the bat. You can do some awesome things within this town if you keep being positive. I want to make sure we keep trucking, keep on going.”

Busch said Rial’s steadfast belief in the McKeesport project has already made a difference.

“I love hanging with Martha,” he said. “For somebody who is originally from Murrysville and lives in the East End, she is so dedicated to helping the McKeesport, Mon Valley area. Most people who aren’t from here avoid this place and don’t think much of it. I am just amazed at that.”

He noted the deterioration of McKeesport and other towns, recalling how busy the city’s streets used to be as its downtown business area thrived before the collapse of the steel industry.

“Most of the conversation is about how much better is used to be,” Busch said. “I like the idea that Martha and the whole group is trying to bring this place back.”

The city is working hard to do that, too, and officials appreciate what the project has done and will do. Mayor Michael Cherepko’s assistant, Jennifer Vertullo, worked for The Daily News for 15 years as a reporter and in the photo department and knows what the community lost when the newspaper closed.

“The tagline on the front page of The Daily News always touted the publication as ‘more than a newspaper.’ It was a ‘community institution,’” she wrote in an email. “And really, that’s what we lost. There was a community connection that surpassed standard media coverage.”

The Tube City Almanac has been a part of the Mon Valley’s media coverage for some time, and its sustainability can likely be credited to the demand for online news, Vertullo wrote. The McKeesport Community Newsroom focuses on the art of storytelling. “Having organizations such as Tube City and the Community Newsroom, who truly care about community coverage, is essential in maintaining a close-knit small town,” she wrote.

Vertullo can foresee the city collaborating with the student newspaper and the newsroom project. And that would bring Vertullo full circle as her daughter, Bowie Koisor, is on its staff and learning from Rial with the others.

She said in addition to the journalistic benefits, Vertullo’s daughter is recognizing that her mother is not the only person out there who values community news.

“Martha is exposing students to aspects of our community that people from outside of McKeesport might not recognize,” the mayor’s assistant wrote. “We have artists. We are drawn to community service. We have interesting events. We have new businesses. She’s making young people pay attention to those things. There’s a lot of positive things happening here, and the McKeesport Community Newsroom is approaching those topics from the perspective of the people.”

The McKeesport Community Newsroom’s holiday dinner starts at 6 p.m. at the Carnegie Library of McKeesport and will include a conversation about the Pittsburgh Union Progress, the strike publication of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. Interim Editor Bob Batz Je. and photographer Steve Mellon will discuss how union members started a news site from scratch and their fight to hold leadership at the Post-Gazette accountable and return to the jobs they love.