Delivery here means the editorial pipeline: what happens between a neighbor's email and a finished piece on the site. Most stories take two to four weeks, longer if they need a photographer on the North Side or a records request from Allegheny County.
You send a paragraph about the person, block or counter you want covered. We reply within a week, usually with two questions about access and timing.
We agree on length, angle and which bus or incline gets you there. Walkable guides list real addresses and weekend hours, so this step takes the longest.
Interviews, photo walks and a stop at the library or church hall calendar. Contributors are Pittsburgh-based, so visits happen in person rather than over the phone.
Names, addresses and transit notes get verified against the source. If a shop changed its Saturday hours, the draft waits until we can confirm the new ones.
Slab-serif headlines, black-and-white frames and the hand-drawn map accents go in last. Photo essays from the rivers take an extra pass for captions.
The piece goes live, then into the weekly newsletter with three weekend ideas. Reader mailbag replies and corrections run in the next roundup.
Not sure where your idea fits? Start with the Saturday coffee map to see how a walkable guide is built, or send the pitch and we will tell you which stage it belongs to.
Every piece on Boom Pittsburgh follows the same working order. It is not fast, and it is not meant to be. Here is what happens between a neighbor sending in an idea and the story appearing in the archive, including the parts that regularly slow things down.
Week 1
Submissions arrive through the reader form or by email. We read for a specific place, a named person and a reason the story matters now. Pitches that name a street corner, a shift change or a season get answered first; vague ideas usually sit until we can ask a follow-up question.
Week 2
We settle the length, the angle and who gets interviewed. A neighborhood guide runs longer than a mailbag letter. If a piece needs photography, we pair the writer with a Pittsburgh-based photographer and set a shooting window, which is why winter pitches sometimes wait for better light.
Weeks 3 to 4
Interviews happen in person where possible, at the counter, the library table or the shop floor. Writers collect addresses, bus routes and opening hours as they go, because those details are checked later and are the first thing readers notice when they are wrong.
Week 5
Names, spellings and transit notes get verified against the source. This is the stage where pieces most often slip: a business changes its weekend hours, or an organizer asks to review a quote before it runs. We would rather hold a story a week than print a wrong address.
Week 6
The story goes live, appears in the weekly newsletter and is filed into the neighborhood archive by area, so Lawrenceville, Brookline, Hazelwood and the North Side each keep their own running record. Corrections are printed in the next mailbag rather than quietly edited away.
Two practical limits worth knowing before you pitch: we do not run sponsored posts, and we cannot cover every event we are invited to. If a story is time-sensitive, say so in the first line and we will tell you honestly whether the calendar allows it.