Who's behind the news?
Who's behind the news?
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Use of DataPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA · serving Southwestern Pennsylvania · Independent nonprofit · formerly PublicSource
Name note: The organization rebranded from PublicSource to Pittsburgh's Public Source in May 2025. The URL publicsource.org continues to serve the site. This page uses the current name throughout but notes the former name where relevant.
Pittsburgh's Public Source — formerly PublicSource — is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, digital-first news organization based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, serving the city and the broader Southwestern Pennsylvania region. It was founded in 2011 in response to a gap identified by Pittsburgh-area civic and community leaders in in-depth and investigative local journalism at a moment when the region's legacy newspapers were reducing their reporting capacity. It operates as an independent 501(c)(3) organization, having separated from its founding home within Pittsburgh Filmmakers in 2015. It is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News, a partner newsroom of Report for America, and has won back-to-back Online Journalism Awards for general excellence by an online micro-newsroom in 2020 and 2021. In May 2025, the organization rebranded — renaming itself Pittsburgh's Public Source, splitting the single word into two, and describing the change as a deliberate signal of its identity as a community asset: "We are the public's source for journalism in this place we call home."
PublicSource was conceived and created around 2011, when Pittsburgh community leaders — civic figures, philanthropists, and journalism advocates — identified a growing vacuum in serious local and investigative reporting as regional newspaper newsrooms contracted. The initial institutional home was Pittsburgh Filmmakers, a nonprofit arts organization with a media production mandate, which provided organizational infrastructure while the nascent news operation built its editorial identity and audience. The first full-time reporters were hired around the time Rich Fitzgerald became the Allegheny County Executive in 2011. Early coverage included explaining Pennsylvania's stand-your-ground law in the aftermath of the killing of Trayvon Martin, coverage of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and investigations of local government and institutional accountability. The first office was on Melwood Avenue in Oakland.
By 2015, PublicSource had grown sufficiently in editorial capacity and organizational maturity to incorporate as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit, separating from Pittsburgh Filmmakers and establishing its own board of directors, management structure, and philanthropic development operation. The transition to independence reflected the development of a sustainable funding model rooted in Pittsburgh's substantial philanthropic foundation sector — a sector that PublicSource's co-executive director Jennie Liska has described as an unusual regional asset for nonprofit news sustainability, noting that the organization's approach to working with foundations emphasizes keeping funders informed about its journalism while maintaining an editorial firewall. The Institute for Nonprofit News membership formalizes the editorial independence standards that Public Source applies to all funder relationships.
Pittsburgh's Public Source covers K–12 education, local government and accountability, economic development and housing, the environment, health, and public safety across Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, with coverage extending to the broader Southwestern Pennsylvania region. It describes its approach as combining "in-depth reporting and analysis alongside diverse perspectives" and aims to "demystify the issues that matter most" to its readership. Beyond conventional accountability reporting, the organization has developed a strong track record in community-driven storytelling — soliciting first-person narratives from community members, conducting workshops and events that extend its reporting into direct civic engagement, and measuring impact through qualitative audience feedback as well as quantitative reach metrics.
Impact documentation is a deliberate editorial practice. PublicSource has tracked responses from readers ranging from people saying they began volunteering at food pantries after reading coverage of food access issues to changed perceptions of unhoused people in Pittsburgh after narrative features. This approach to measuring civic impact — rather than simply counting page views — reflects a theory of journalism as civic infrastructure that aligns with the broader nonprofit local news model.
Collaborative journalism has been a consistent feature of the organization's work. PublicSource has partnered with WESA, Pittsburgh's NPR affiliate, for audio and radio distribution of its reporting; with OpenCampus, a higher education journalism network; and with other regional and national journalism organizations on multi-outlet investigations. A notable collaborative project was Good River: Stories of the Ohio, which connected communities across the 25-million-person Ohio River watershed through environmental and community journalism — an initiative that extended the publication's geographic reach well beyond its Pittsburgh home base.
On 22 May 2025, at a staff gathering at the Museum Lab on Pittsburgh's North Side, the organization announced its rebranding from PublicSource to Pittsburgh's Public Source. The decision to split the name into two words and to explicitly add "Pittsburgh's" in front was explained by leadership as a deliberate identity statement: "We see ourselves as a community asset, so we want to signal that more clearly." The change acknowledged that most readers had always naturally written the name as two words anyway; the explicit city name in the masthead signals both geographic rootedness and civic ownership — the idea that the organization belongs to Pittsburgh in a meaningful sense, not merely as a service provider but as a community institution. A new logo, color palette, and typefaces were unveiled alongside the name, described by staff as a "glow-up" that reflected "the tradition of our role as a public-service news organization and the bold, curious spark that we have to unlock new ways to serve you."
Pittsburgh's Public Source is a partner newsroom of Report for America, the national journalism service program. Report for America corps members embedded at the newsroom have covered local democracy and government — specifically focusing on undercovered stories and practices of local government in the Pittsburgh region — extending the publication's reporting capacity beyond what its core staff would otherwise allow. The organization has a team of approximately 16 staff across editorial, business, and operations functions. Co-Executive Directors Autumn Brewington and Jennie Liska share organizational leadership.
Pittsburgh's Public Source publishes without paywall at publicsource.org. All journalism is free to read and, in keeping with the organization's collaborative philosophy, is made available for republishing by other news organizations. Newsletter subscriptions are available through the site. Reader donations and philanthropic grants fund the organization; contributions can be made at publicsource.org/donate. Contact for editorial inquiries, story tips, and collaboration proposals is through the team page at publicsource.org/team, which lists individual email addresses for staff members.
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