Advertising Pittsburgh's visiting talkers

Lots of famous, important or smart people came to town all the time and the PG never wrote a word about them, so I invented 'Town Talkers' so readers would know they were coming.

It amazed me that famous people or brilliant or newsy people would come to Pittsburgh to give lectures or talk to college kids or business groups without the Post-Gazette institutionalizing a way to advertise their comings, so I invented 'Town Talkers.'

It was basic newspaper info, but I also got to put my little spin on it or make cheap jokes.

The ‘Town Talkers’ example above is from 1998. So is the sexy one below.

I also tried to do Q&As with the most important visitors and talkers in advance, which served PG readers and filled its empty spaces with good material. For example, the married political adversaries Mary Matlin and James Carville.

Still waiting for my Pulitzer.

And of course the name of my favorite libertarian priest, Father Sirico, would have never made it into the PG’s pages if I were not in charge of ‘Town Talkers.’