Last week’s closure of the Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism represents a loss for the region, as a sustained voice for the vulnerable, and particularly the incarcerated, goes silent. The tiny outfit, founded by Brittany Hailer and Jody DiPerna in 2020, broke stories about Pennsylvania’s criminal justice system that changed government policy and shaped advocacy.

PINJ’s commitment to tracking and investigating deaths at Allegheny County Jail eventually culminated in the creation of Pennsylvania’s first-ever dashboard tracking all deaths in jail custody across the commonwealth. The reporting of Ms. Hailer and PennLive’s Joshua Vaughn also revealed how medical examiners often don’t perform full autopsies or use obscure and even misleading language to shield jails from responsibility.

All the while, PINJ’s dogged pursuit of truth resulted in legal victories that will reverberate across the nation’s newsrooms for years to come. Ms. Hailer’s court cases have put pressure on prisons, jails and medical examiner’s offices to increase transparency.

Just last month, Ms. Hailer won a settlement affirming that Allegheny County Bureau of Corrections employees may talk to the media as private citizens. Increasingly, illegal gag clauses have restricted the free speech rights of government workers. This comes as the administration of Gov. Josh Shapiro is being sued by the free-speech group FIRE for a vague rule prohibiting “scandalous or disgraceful” behavior by state workers, on or off the job.

Ms. Hailer’s settlement was the first awarded to a journalist, as opposed to an affected public employee, meaning that other media professionals can now make claims on their own behalf. As a result, the Society of Professional Journalists put out a nationwide call to action, urging other reporters to fight back against unfair and unconstitutional gag rules imposed by government agencies.

Ms. Hailer also won a Right-to-Know case last year, after initially being barred from accessing the autopsy report of a man who had died in the Allegheny County Jail in 2020. The county’s lawyers argued that, under the Pennsylvania Coroner’s Act, autopsy reports are public records — just not in the state’s two largest counties. But Ms. Hailer rightly prevailed.

Her win set the stage for journalists to access autopsy reports that had previously been withheld. The work of PINJ has not only uncovered real scandals, but created a legal way for other journalists to do the same.

This is even more impressive considering the tiny scale of the newsroom. PINJ waded into legal battles with minimal legal backup, relying on the support of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press’s Local Legal Initiative, as well as the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic to guide them to their wins. Ms. Hailer has taken her skills and her passion to Cleveland, where she is investigating that city’s incarceration system for The Marshall Project, a national criminal justice-focused journalism nonprofit.

The Post-Gazette Editorial Board benefitted from PINJ’s work, as did many other media outlets in the region. There is no substitute for an organization dedicated entirely to these challenging, and often invisible, areas of social justice and injustice, and Pittsburgh — and our incarcerated citizens in particular — will be worse for its closure.

First Published: September 10, 2024, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: September 10, 2024, 2:20 p.m.