My local paper went tabloid.

  In response to the link below, I wrote this to the editorial desk at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. If you're not from Pgh it isn't going to make a lot of sense to you so my apologies. 
  My goal here Pghers is to SPREAD THE WORD. 
  http://www.post-gazette.com/life/dining/2015/03/01/Kevin-Sousa-visionary-chef-with-fiscal-issues-on-his-plate/stories/201502270323

 The PG editorial team dropped the ball running Jonathan Silver and Melissa McCart's article about Kevin Sousa. It sounds off like an expose but it's really a hatchet job. 
  There's no news to it, no journalism. Nothing uncovered but a queasy sense that the Post Gazette is trying to challenge the Trib for getting things "Right" in Western PA.
  The article baits bias against "charity" and non profit people being somehow soft or wasteful because their driving impulse is not a market profit. "How dare Kickstarter not do a financial study of its awardees?" Well, take it up with kickstarter or hear the deeper message- do your own research. 
  How we've again rebounded from the hilarity of anyone championing the free market system, 7 years after the managers of that market got caught with the country's pants down and everyone but them lost about a trillion dollars, I can't quite imagine. You'd think after the banking collapse folks would listen a little less to lies about fair playing fields and have some respect for individuals who want to make change and not a fortune. 
  But - brass tacks: 
  The piece foregrounds Sousa's "debts" and then mention 20 paragraphs later that both the new owners of Salt and Union Pig and Chicken -his former restaurants- assumed most of these these debts willingly. Professionals who'd known Sousa, and worked with him, made an analysis and bought the businesses. 
  So...I know I'm an actor but doesn't that mean it's not his debt anymore?? That's called "business" right?  (Good God, is the PG anti-business? Let's hope next week they go after all those young debt dodgers polluting this nation's cities. Otherwise known as college graduates.)
 How many restaurants run without debt? Damn few. They're accounting dance is up their with Hollywood's.
 But does debt make a business unattractive to investment? In both these cases, obviously not. 
 I can think of a few major corporations, several banks, and a construction company or two in Pgh still standing which if debt was an obstacle to development would have gone down long ago. It must be all the good work they do for the community that justifies the corporate charity and public money they get. Too bad the public can't do background checks on them.
  I forget sometimes that debt's a bad thing until it's really huge. 
  In the article, every foundation who'd given money to Sousa (and THEY do financial background checks) said they still fully supported him and his work.
   Did they respond, "We're deeply concerned, we're looking into it." ? No. 
   Again- where's the news here that's fit to print?
  John Fetterman's family gave 50 grand to the non-profit that's working with Sousa? (Full disclosure, I gave 10) So what?   Should they be using that money to expand the kitchen or put an infinity pool in the backyard?
Is that what we expect our "wealth creators" to do?
Like Dick Scaife floating the Trib for 20 years with his kids' money? 
I sure hope the PG doesn't have similar problems. They might have to accept charity too. 
Now that would be a story.
  I kinda like when the wealthy folks I know support a tough cause rather than paying their golf club dues or expanding the mansion in Peter's Township. 
  A legit issue, something worth taking up an entire page in a major newspaper, would be has Sousa been on the take? Has he siphoned off funds for his own benefit? Nope. Did he pay off his house with the money? No, in fact he took out a second mortgage and invested the money in his own business. 
  Oh and then he moved from a cushy up and coming hipster town to a place that's lost 80% of its population, tax base, and building stock. Because he believes he's capable, it's capable, of major change. 
 He walked away from the celeb chef, tv show, bbq sauce, cook book route to work in this town. It's a hard thing to do. An astonishingly brave move. 
  When Richard Branson blew a couple hundred million dollars during his first attempts at building the Virgin Empire did people call him irresponsible? No they called him a visionary because in the end what he wanted .....was a fortune. He wanted to be rich. And we'll excuse anything as long as the ambition behind it has a bottom line. Driven by ideals and dreams we find it somehow offensive. Uncomfortable. A waste. 
  I find that astounding. Because in the end it's simple envy. It's the worst instinct in the American psyche. Why aren't my dreams worth as much as yours? 
  Call Sousa a dreamer, call him nuts, call him willing to run a deficit. Don't write an article which for 500 opening words makes him sound like a minor felon. It's cheap writing. It's beneath the tradition of the Post-Gazette and truly for the first time in my life as a Pittsburgher I was ashamed to be reading my local paper, the one I delivered as a kid.
 The only article about Sousa that matters will be written in 5 years. Is Superior Motors running, is it not?
 Maybe by then, in the new media economy, the Trib and the PG will have merged. 
 Sounds like they already have. 
 ALCOSAN's going to raise water rates 600% over the next 20 years, two major foundations in this city know our air quality is about the worst in the country and can't talk about it - even in their own board rooms- because of corporate pressure, fracking's happening 100 yards from major County water supplies (which will actually SHORTEN PEOPLE'S LIVES), developers get tax breaks for affordable condos which are never affordable, the Strip's being held hostage by a for-profit company owned by its own non-proft foundation (explain that one Neo Cons) and what do we get in a full page article, a serious investigation into the dark underpinnings of Pgh's power brokers?
 A guy from McKees Rocks owes Sysco 25 grand. 
 Roll press.