Editorial: 2024 was a year of questions and conversations
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In 2024, our editorials asked questions and started conversations.
Pittsburgh being Pittsburgh, our most read editorial came in January, asking why Steelers coach Mike Tomlin had to be so petulant when presented with a very predictable question at a news conference after losing a wild-card playoff game to Buffalo.
Other issues on the table were of national significance.
All eyes were on Pennsylvania in an election year. We knew that was going to happen. It’s the burden of being a swing state. From the start of campaigning through the primary and all the way to the general election, our editorials discussed what was happening and how it was happening.
But the attention on the region became a microscope when gunfire erupted at a Trump campaign rally in July in Butler County, wounding the former president and killing a local man. We explored the impact of the violence on the democratic process, the need for committees to investigate and the failures of the U.S. Secret Service.
The importance of emergency services in the tragedy was another area we questioned. It was a topic we touched on repeatedly as ambulance services, fire companies and police departments struggled to stay open.
Police were also the topic of conversations about responsibility, as officers and chiefs were on the other side of the cuffs. There were arrests and pleas. There were also officer-involved incidents like the January shooting of an Upper St. Clair man and the continued complications of the 2021 death of Jim Rogers after being being shocked repeatedly with a Taser.
That brings us to our duty to question government actions. In Pittsburgh, it was the purchasing card scandal in city government. In Westmoreland County, it was the dysfunction in the register of wills office.
Whether it was the regional implications of an international corporate merger like the U.S. Steel-Nippon Steel deal or the way every school district, municipality and Pennsylvania agency is answerable to the state Right to Know Law, the questions were out there. The conversations needed to be had.
And we can’t wait to see what 2025 has to offer.