The City of McKeesport in southwestern Pennsylvania once had a population of more than fifty thousand people and a newspaper that dated back to the nineteenth century. Technology has caused massive disruption to American journalism, throwing thousands of reporters out of work, closing newsrooms, and leaving vast areas with few traditional news sources—including McKeesport. With the loss of their local paper in 2015, residents now struggle to make sense of what goes on in their community and to separate facts from gossip—often driven by social media. The changes taking place in this one Pennsylvania community are being repeated across the United States as hundreds of local newspapers close, creating news deserts and leaving citizens with little access to reliable local journalism. The obituary for local news, however, does not have to read all bad: Even in the bleakest places, citizens are discovering what happens in their communities and becoming gatekeepers to information for the people around them. In McKeesport, citizens are attempting to make sense of the news on their own, for better and worse. This experiment not only offers clues about what happens after a local newspaper dies, but also provides guidance to the way forward.
Long before the Supreme Court ruled that impoverished defendants in criminal cases have a right to free counsel, Philadelphia’s public defenders were working to ensure fair trials for all. In 1934, when penniless defendants were routinely railroaded through the courts without ever seeing a lawyer, Philadelphia attorney Francis Fisher Kane helped create the Voluntary Defender Association, supported by charity and free from political interference, to represent poor people accused of crime.
When the Supreme Court’s 1963 decision Gideonv. Wainwright mandated free counsel for indigent defendants, the Defender (as it is now known) became more essential than ever, representing at least 70 percent of those caught in the machinery of justice in the city. Its groundbreaking work in juvenile advocacy, homicide representation, death-row habeas corpus petitions, parole issues, and alternative sentencing has earned a national reputation.
In The Defender, Edward Madeira, past president of the Defender’s Board of Directors, and former Philadelphia Inquirer journalist Michael Schaffer chart the 80-plus-year history of the organization as it grew from two lawyers in 1934 to a staff of nearly 500 in 2015.
This is a compelling story about securing justice for those who need it most.
The death of David Leo Lawrence in 1966 ended a fifty-year career of major influence in American politics. In a front-page obituary, the New York Times noted that Lawrence, the longtime mayor of Pittsburgh, governor of Pennsylvania, and power in Democratic national politics, disliked being called Boss. But, the Times noted, “he was one anyway.”
Certainly Lawrence was a consumate politician. Born in a poor, working-class neighborhood, in the present-day Golden Triange of Pittsburgh, he was from boyhood an astute student of politics and a devoted Democrat. Paying minute attention to every detail at the ward and precinct level, he revived the moribund Democratic party of Pittsburgh and fashioned a machine that upset the long-entrenched Republican organization in 1932.
When “Davy” Lawrence, as he was affectionately known, won the gubernatorial election in 1958, he became the first Roman Catholic governor of Pennsylvania and the oldest. But he achieved his greatest public recognition as mayor of Pittsburgh. Taking office in 1945, at the close of World War II, this stalwart Democrat formed an alliance with the predominantly Republican business community to bring about the much acclaimed Pittsburgh Renaissance, transforming the downtown business district and persuading many large corporations to retain their national headquarters in Pittsburgh. In 1958 the editors of Fortune magazine name Pittsburgh as one of the eight best administered cities in America.
Don’t Call Me Boss examines the lengthy career of this remarkable politician. Using over one hundred interviews, as well as extensive archival material, Michael Weber demonstrates how Lawrence was able to balance his intense political drive and devotion to the Democratic party with the larger needs of his city and state. Although his administration was not free of controversy, as indicated by the city’s police and free work scandals. Lawrence showed that it was possible to make the transition from nineteenth-century political boss to modern municipal manager. He was one of the few politicians of the century to do so. When the undisputed bosses of other American cities - the Curleys, Pendergasts, and Hagues - were out of power and disgraced, Lawrence was elected governor of Pennsylvania.
More than twenty years after his death, David L. Lawrence and his success in rebuilding the city of Pittsburgh continue to serve as an example of effective urban leadership.
Dismissed as a flimsy front for management interests, industrial unions nonetheless carved out a role in the Carnegie Steel Company empire and then at U.S. Steel. James D. Rose examines the pivotal role played by these company-sponsored employee representation plans (ERPs) at the legendary steel works in Duquesne, Pennsylvania.
As Rose reveals, ERPs matured from tools of the company into worker-led organizations that represented the interests of the mills' skilled tradesmen and workers. ERPs and management created a sophisticated bargaining structure. Meanwhile, the independent trade union gave way to the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), a professionalized organization that expended huge resources on companywide unionization. Yet even when the SWOC secured a collective bargaining agreement in 1937, it failed to sign up a majority of the Duquesne workforce.
Sophisticated and persuasive, Duquesne and the Rise of Steel Unionism confirms that what people did on the shop floor played a critical role in the course of steel unionism.
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