As a former newspaperman, John G. Craig, Jr. possesses a honed talent for challenging the veracity of
stories told to him. That habit of mind helps drive his work to secure Pittsburgh Today as one of America's rare
repositories of information about the relative performance of a metropolitan
region.
Two aspects of Craig's career come into focus when the former editor of the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette explains how his years in a newsroom inspired him to
lead a civic project to publish accurate, independent data
characterizing Pittsburgh's position in the world--and force attention onto
measures to change its future.
First, he has a professional journalist's memory for just about every
story that attracted ink during his newspaper career. And he's a practiced
separator of facts from the many modes of storytelling that skillful
petitioners use on an editor when seeking either more or less attention in the daily
narrative of public life.
"I'm really influenced by my experience at the Post-Gazette," he
says. "Somebody says we have a world-class symphony. Let's assume that you
care to have a world-class symphony orchestra. How do you know it's
world-class? What's the basis for that statement? If you're going to
raise a million dollars for charitable good works, and 50 percent of the money
is going to the symphony because it is world-class, you'd better know why it's
a world-class symphony."
Getting a grip on the Pittsburgh region for the purpose of measuring any number
of its "world-class" comparisons is no small achievement. As
elsewhere, the relevant geography here pays tribute to the interstate commerce clause in the
U.S. Constitution by overflowing state and local boundaries that define the numbers. Craig's colleagues follow a map that tracks where people move in the region to make a living and set down roots. The project thus
includes parts of northern West Virginia and eastern Ohio among 22 counties
that share relevant social and economic ties.
"It's an organism," Craig says. "You start thinking about where
does the Post-Gazette circulate newspapers? Where do people come from to get on
an airplane? Where do the Pirates (and Steelers) have season ticket holders?
Where does PNC put branch banks? Where do people come from to work in
Pittsburgh? You don't want to overlook any part of it."
Within that whole vital basin of regional life, Pittsburgh Today measures jobs, earnings, business vitality, the quality of
housing, arts and entertainment, government, health care, education, the
environment, and other domains of civic well-being. Actively
disseminated through regional organizations, indicators from the data
are updated daily at the Pittsburgh Today website and discussed in a report that Craig
writes for each issue of the Pittsburgh Quarterly.
While driving the vehicle that tracks everything vital in the Pittsburgh region, Craig, who serves as president of Pittsburgh Today, collaborates closely with allies Paul O'Neill,
former Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and CEO of Alcoa, and three other members
of the Pittsburgh Today 
organizing committee: Dr. Bernard Goldstein, retired dean of the
University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, Dr. Granger Morgan,
Professor and head of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and Dr. Lauren Resnick, Director of the University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center.
"I never do
anything without checking with them," Craig says of the group he calls
"the Five Witch Doctors."
With the backing of that robust panel of fact-oriented leaders, Pittsburgh Today found a place to call home
when Carnegie Mellon University and
the University of Pittsburgh agreed together to promote the collaboration of scholars and provide space, administrative and research support. The latter draws Craig almost every day to the
University of Pittsburgh's Center for Social and Urban Research. There he collaborates with research specialist Chris Briem, Pittsburgh Today's
director of finding the answers to everything.
In deciding what to measure, the team actively consults with foundations and other key regional
partners, and also with a community of professional
interpreters of regional data. The project thus elevates a platform in the community for
fact-oriented discussions of public policy.
"We have really gotten into peoples' heads that this is a region; and that
it isn't Pennsylvania only but includes West Virginia and eastern Ohio,"
Craig says. "About 28 percent of the people who live in [the] Pittsburgh
[region] aren't citizens of Pennsylvania. You have these areas that are part of
Pittsburgh but they've been outside the profile. Getting them in and people
thinking about it is the first step."
A next step might be organizations or agencies using the boundaries of real life to offer
goods and services for the entire region. Meanwhile, more remains to
be measured for followup by those powers that would be able to influence outcomes.
For that reason, Craig has pioneered this rare regional data archive
that publishes every day. "That comes out of my newspaper
experience," he says. And perhaps also it comes from knowing after so many years at the head of a major news organization that people
in place to decide the future of Pittsburgh are doing so every day--and
not always with the facts.
"I think that the odds of having people make a correct decision are
improved if they have access to good information," Craig says. "There
is no guarantee if you have this information available that they are going to
use it. But if you don't have it available, there's absolutely no hope at all
because there's no choice."
Joseph Plummer, Innovation and Job News Editor for Keystone Edge, writes about companies and
organizations that are creating change in the Pennsylvania economy. In
an earlier part of his career, he wrote daily editorials for the Post-Gazette after
lively morning debates with Editor John Craig. Send feedback here.To receive Keystone Edge free every week, click here.
Photographs of John G. Craig by Renee Rosensteel