Death of the Daily News by Andrew Conte

Death of the Daily News How Citizen Gatekeepers Can Save Local Journalism by Andrew Conte University of Pittsburgh Press, 176 pp., hardcover $26.00 The internet and digitization have changed the economics of delivering news. Print newspapers in particular, with some exceptions, are struggling to survive. Many already haven’t. Small towns and rural areas have been especially hard hit. Communities...
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Ahead of Her Time: Pennsylvania Aviator Helen Richey

It was the era of plucky barnstorming aviators. Charles Lindbergh had flown across the Atlantic in 1927 and in the ensuing decade the romance of the skies was in full flower. Flight records were being chased and broken with regularity. Faster, sleeker airplanes were being introduced. Air races with cash prizes were in vogue across the country. The public, fed by an eager press, was fascinated....
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Pennsylvania Heritage Recommends

Gettysburg Religion Refinement, Diversity, and Race in the Antebellum and Civil War Border North In the borderland between slavery and freedom, Gettysburg remains among the most legendary landmarks of the American Civil War, asserts Steve Longenecker, author of Gettysburg Religion: Refinement, Diversity, and Race in the Antebellum and Civil War Border North (Fordham University Press, 2014,...
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The ‘State’ of Allegheny

One of the first centers of the organization of the Re­publican party and scene of its first national conven­tion in February, 1856, Allegheny County was strongly for Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860. As the vote count proceeded, one of the leaders kept sending telegrams to Lincoln’s home in Illinois, keeping him up on the news that “Allegheny gives a majority of …...
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Women in Pennsylvania … The First Two Hundred Years

In the past two hundred years thousands of women have contributed significantly to the social, economic, political and cultural richness of Pennsylvania. An encyclopedia could barely sketch their contributions. Since this article cannot possibly present a complete picture of women’s history in our state, it will survey the changes in women’s roles with brief accounts of a few famous...
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Black Steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania

Blacks constituted a sizable core of workers in the iron and steel industry of western Penn­sylvania between 1900 and 1950. Most had migrated to the Pittsburgh vicinity from the agricultural South during the two World Wars in hopes of improving their economic plight by obtaining jobs in area mills and foundries. However, racial discrimination prevented the majority of them from advancing beyond...
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The Proud Romanians of Pennsylvania

Search through the smoky steel towns nestled in the hills of central and western Pennsylvania and you will find the scattered descendants of once-numerous communities of Romanian immigrants. While Romanians settled throughout the state wherever mining and ‘industrial work was present, the largest concentrations remaining to­day are in Erie, Mercer. Lawrence, Beaver, Allegheny, Cambria and...
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Letters to the Editor

“Dapper Dan” My congratulations on an outstanding issue of Pennsylvania Heritage for summer 1995! I have watched the magazine grow and mature, and this issue was the best yet. I was particularly impressed with the piece entitled “‘Dapper Dan’ Flood, Pennsylvania’s Legendary Congressman” by William C. Kashatus III. In 1960, President John F. Kennedy...
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Fishing on the Yough River

The Youghiogheny (pronounced yock-ah-gay-nee) River – known to locals, anglers, and kayakers as “The Yough” – is a 134-mile long tributary of the Monongahela River which rises in northern West Virginia, flows through Maryland, and enters southwestern Pennsylvania on the border between Fayette and Somerset Counties. It joins the Monongahela from the southeast at...
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