Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Launches 'Aging Edge' for Older Readers

At the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, reporter Gary Rotstein is responsible for bringing news about health, Medicare and retirement stories, and tips for caregivers to the area’s senior community, and he’s delivering the content through the newspaper’s new digital section called Aging Edge (post-gazette.com/aging-edge).

Aging Edge, which launched in April, is a way for older readers to easily find community specific information without having to search through different sources online, and it provides readers with unique content specific to their interests and needs. In a time when many publishers are struggling to attract younger readers to their websites, Aging Edge has the potential to capture an older audience.

Rotstein, who has covered the aging community for decades in addition to other beats at the Post-Gazette, writes original content for the section, uploads aging-related stories from other Post-Gazette reporters, and gathers aggregated news from around the web.

Even though the content is geared toward older readers, Rotstein said they weren’t concerned about launching it online only. That decision was made because of limited resources in the printed newspaper and due to the company’s overall push toward creating more digital content.

Gary Rotstein, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, reporter

“The nice thing about this is—for aging related stories—we’re very limited in the newspaper to the amount of space that can be devoted to those,” he said. “By using the website, we can vastly improve the amount of information providing both new items…as well as provide a resource for people in the way of websites and phone numbers and how to’s through the permanent (online) archives.”

Launching a section dedicated to a specific audience is a useful way to connect with local audiences. Rotstein said outside of Florida, the city of Pittsburgh has one of the oldest populations for a metropolitan area.

“(Aging Edge) probably makes a little bit more sense for us, but the rest of the nation is catching up to us in terms of the elderly population growing. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if some other newspapers try it out as well,” he said.

Because Aging Edge is still fairly new to readers, Rotstein said they haven’t seen a large amount of reader responses yet, but they’re hoping as the site grows, people will become more familiar with it. They are also focused on targeting advertisers who have reason to pursue the baby boomer demographic.