Pittsburghers pride ourselves on being in the know. For those whose professions involve technology and business, being in the know is a requirement. Knowing what’s going on in tech and business drives getting a new job, finding a person or resource that can help you and revealing market trends.
So we asked our readers and people in the local business community which newsletters and blogs they read to get their Pittsburgh tech and business news. Here’s what they had to say.
Pittsburgh Tech Beat– How can one man be such a data hub?
In 2023, Austin Orth, an aspiring tech entrepreneur was doing reliability engineering and dev-ops for Pittsburgh-based college ratings website, Niche. While there, he realized that if he could be more knowledgeable about what’s going on in the tech scene in Pittsburgh, he could advance his career and be able to better control what he does for a living.
His answer: When he learned something interesting about the local tech community, he jotted it down in ways that he could later distill into ideas that could propel himself forward.
Orth also has a tendency to think of how he can help others — so he decided to also open a Substack account where he could send out a monthly roundup by email to share with his friends about Pittsburgh tech news, which he dubbed Pittsburgh Tech Beat. Until he started Pittsburgh Tech Beat, he hadn’t seen anybody injecting local tech newsletters with personality and analysis – so he decided to embellish the news with his own.
Reader comments to NEXTpittsburgh about Orth’s Pittsburgh Tech Beat:
- “Practical, valuable, no hype and really well written”
- “It’s got a good summary of what’s going on in the tech world”
According to Orth, Pittsburgh Tech Beat’s readership started with 20 friends – and based on word of mouth with no marketing, it is now closing in on 300 readers.
“People really liked my analysis of the Pittsburgh tech job with my statistics and graphs,” says Orth. “They tell me this is really what can help me find a job.”
In April, he shared a list of Pittsburgh companies that were “stolen” by Silicon Valley; and this month, he added his own unique slant, when Duolingo’s CEO, Luis von Ahn, sent a memo to employees about the company’s integration of AI into hiring, and how Duolingo “will gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle.”
Excerpt below.
“This memo was then shared on the company’s social accounts, triggering a firestorm of overwhelmingly negative reactions. The company’s social media accounts were swarmed with frustrated users airing their grievances in the comments section. They argued that Duolingo has already been using AI for its content, and that the new AI-generated content is demonstrably bad.”
Technical.ly – sometimes outsiders recognize the potential in Pittsburgh
Technical.ly, with both a weekly newsletter covering Pittsburgh and a blog, is a deliberate resource created by a team of media entrepreneurs in Philadelphia.
According to Danya Henninger, editorial director for the company, they saw “Pittsburgh as an emerging tech and innovation hub” five years ago, a time during which she says not many people were saying that.
Henninger already had some Pittsburgh media experience when she was part of the launch of The Incline by Philadelphia-based Spirited Media, before The Incline was acquired in 2019; then subsequently shut down in 2023.
Since entering the Pittsburgh market, Technical.ly has had three local embedded journalists (who covered the region in consecutive sprints), which they funded in part with foundation dollars from Heinz Endowment and others. Their Western PA coverage also includes articles by over a dozen freelancers plus guest posts from within the region.
Alice Crow currently covers Pittsburgh. A Pittsburgh native who previously wrote for the Waco Tribune-Herald in Texas, she joined Technical.ly in September 2024 when she returned to the region.
“I’m getting personally invested in the coverage we do,” says Crow. “The more time I meet with people who are passionate, I get more invested.”
That viewpoint is demonstrated by her Q&A with Katie Lynn, the first woman machinist at Composidie, as she spotlights some of the challenges that women often face when entering male-dominated industries today.
Crow has her finger on the pulse of the financing deals that are propelling Western PA entrepreneurs and startups, which makes her column a go-to for people who are trying to keep tabs on local tech company growth.
It’s not unusual to see Crow at tech events around the city looking for unique stories to share with readers. She also offers a quiz monthly so her readers can self-assess whether they’ve been keeping up with the Pittsburgh tech community.
Reader comments about Technical.ly Pittsburgh’s coverage:
- “Awesome recaps of what’s really happening here”
- “Easy, concise info”
- “Unique POV”
- “Tells us exactly what we wanna know”
Although the company doesn’t break out their circulation by market, Henninger and Crow told NEXTpittsburgh that Pittsburgh subscribers have grown by 50%, and it is the fastest- growing subscriber base of all their markets, which include Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC and Delaware.
Honorable mentions
Those two newsletters were popular among people who responded to my nonscientific poll of Pittsburgh tech community members. Orth’s Pittsburgh Tech Beat is among my favorite reads – in part, because he often reveals insights that I don’t learn elsewhere (and frankly, since I talk to a lot of people in the community every week, that’s a high bar).
Several other local newsletters were among those listed as favorites by respondents:
Pittsburgh Startup News
Reader comment: “Minimalist with a lot of substance”
TEQ
Three decades in both print and online versions
Reader comment: “Reliable year after year”
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