Donora, Pennsylvania, was once home to a thriving steel mill that stretched for about four miles, although that mill closed more than 50 years ago. Today, the town of about 5,000 residents has no gas station, bank or grocery store. And just a few years ago it closed its only school.
The closure of that school was particularly hard on a community that has been in decline for decades.
“Everyone loved that school. It was huge for the community,” says Jeanne Marie Laskas, professor of English and founding director of the Center for Creativity at the University of Pittsburgh.
But the building that was once Donora High School has also become a symbol of hope, as leaders in the region debate opening a community college campus on the site, which proponents believe could be a spark to revive this city, as it would generate jobs. , clients for things like a coffee shop and a library, and more.
Laskas is a long-time magazine journalist with experience in immersing herself in unfamiliar environments to document them. And he devoted the last three years to an unusually ambitious attempt to tell the story of this declining city, which has much in common with many other small rural communities across the United States. Along with another professor at the university, Erin Anderson, who has a background in audio production, Laskas spent days living in Donora and recording interviews with everyone she could, collecting more than 800 hours of audio recordings in the process.
He even bought a house in a historic neighborhood of the city (an all-poured concrete structure designed by Thomas Edison) to use as a base for the project, and to which he commuted from his home outside Pittsburgh, about a 45-minute drive away. way back.
The teachers didn't have a specific story in mind and didn't know what they would end up focusing on. But the plan was to make a podcast that gave a glimpse of what life is like in a shrinking community that was once a symbol of a growing American industry but now feels forgotten and neglected.
“We were thinking, 'What if we really settled here and were in town at the odd times, first thing in the morning, when the school buses come by and the garbage truck comes, and all the little moments when raisins?” I think they're nothing, but what do they amount to?'” says Laskas.
The resulting 10-episode podcast, Cement Citywas launched last fall to great acclaim, including an ad in The New York Times list one of the best podcasts of the year.
Education turns out to be a theme of the town's history. And for this week's EdSurge podcast, we spoke with Laskas about his Cement City project and his findings about the role of education in America's many forgotten small towns.
Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or in the player below.
