Word count: 909 | Reading time: 4 min read
Pretzel Logic
Why I rant about PNI so much, and what you can do to make a difference.
I am often asked what is behind my seeming obsession with events at the Ivory Tower of Truth on North Broad. An obsession that recently led Inquirer mouthpiece Charlie Fancher to complain to trade weekly Editor & Publisher, in a story about that paper’s tax deal with the city, that he was not surprised City Paper broke the story, because we have “a long history of attacking” the Inky.
In the two years since I came to this paper from the depths of journalistic hell otherwise known as the Courier-Compost, City Paper readers have, at times, been offered more than they might want to know about the madcap adventures of Bob Hall and his Merry Pranksters, who have done their best to mangle two of the last vestiges of American newspaper greatness.
Why?
Why do I care about the sharecroppers who till the suburban news firmament for the Philadelphia Inquirer for a fraction of what staffers earn?
Why do I care that people are turning away from the Inky at an alarming rate?
Why do I care that Tony Ridder, overlord of a Knight-Ridder media empire that includes the Inky and Daily News, has ordered the squeezing of an extra 50 percent profit out of a news lemon that doesn’t have enough juice as it is?
And why does my blood boil at the thought that Ridder and his local Boswell Bob Hall are dangling the future of the Daily News as some ledgerbook balance between piggish profits and the perfectly acceptable return of 8 percent?
The answer, my friends, is this.
I love newspapers.
Always have.
Ever since I was a boy and read one of those I Want To Be… books about a reporter who spends his day at the zoo interviewing the elephant trainer.
Hi-diddly-dee, the reporter’s life was for me. I knew right then and there. And since then, I have spent probably far too many hours and far too much energy chasing stories and typing words into computers to tell those stories. So much time and energy that my wife and kids probably think of me as that stranger with a beard who spends a few hours in the house between chasing and typing.
So it is only natural that I like to keep an eye on Philadelphia’s newspaper monopoly.
I was born in a town, New York, where bloody-fisted competition between dailies was a way of life. When I was older, I lived in a town, Boston, where the Herald and the Globe made a sport of beating each other up.
In between then and now, I have read and worked for a few great newspapers and many really, really bad newspapers.
I worked for a paper in a town where most people never heard of my paper. I competed against the New Haven Register, truly one of the worst newspapers in the country, where staffers have been fired for being critical of advertisers. I worked for the aforementioned Compost where quality was Job 12. I did an eight-month stint as a sharecropper at the Inky’s Cherry Hill bureau where I worked with some of the best and brightest reporters and editors in the business.
And, now that I have settled in at City Paper, I am in the unique position of being in the catbird seat, observing and commenting on Philly’s daily monopoly.
I have learned a lot in the last two years.
The Inky is universally loathed while the Daily News is loved by many, if not all.
Both papers are among the very finest of their kind. The Inquirer is still one of the best papers in the country when it comes to writing stories that explain what’s at stake in complicated issues — like, for instance, Henry Holcomb’s coverage of the Meyer Werft fiasco.
The Daily News is as good as it gets when it comes to a tabloid daily covering a big city. Rarely a week goes by when the Daily News doesn’t embarrass the Inky, as it did with Jim Nolan’s coverage of the Frank Antico mess — a mess the Inky eventually pontificated about on its editorial page.
That may all soon end and that is what is pissing me off.
Listen up, Bob Hall and Tony Ridder.
When I write about your declining circulation and the myriad of problems you are having, it is not with glee.
It is with anger.
Most newspapers in this country are garbage. For all their problems, the Inky and Daily News are not in that category.
Try to remember that the next time your lips are smacking the rear ends of your stockholders.
And to you, loyal readers, if you care about saving the Daily News and want to remind Tony and Bob that there are people who care, take the time to fill out the coupon at the bottom of this column and mail it to Bob Hall, c/o Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., 400 N. Broad St., Philadelphia, PA 19101.
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Dear Tony and Bob,
I want you to save the Daily News.
signature: __________________________
address: ___________________________
phone number: ______________________
