News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
It’s not often we will give things associated with The Philadelphia Inquirer credit for doing anything right, but that’s only because they so rarely do.
However, when they do we give credit and Jimmy Kempski’s Philly.com smackdown of a smug, self-righteous, politically correct and otherwise pompous New York Times story by Juliet Macur certainly deserves credit.
For those that remember its relevance, former Inky reporter Ralph Cipriano is doing yeoman’s work at BigTrail.net covering the saga among the battling Democrats who own the publication regarding the firing of editor Bill Marimow.
It’s fascinating writing and shows that straight reporting can be far more interesting than the entertainment garbage that now passes for news in the dying dinosaurs. Cipriano makes the implicit case that the dinosaur may not be dying — at least as certainly — if they actually did its job rather than be a mere mouthpiece for the union-backed establishment that runs — and corrupts — the City of Philadelphia, and by extension the state.
Did you know that the Carpenters’ Union dumped $45 million of its pension fund into the Inky when it was sold to a group led by Brian Tierney in 2006? You wouldn’t if you depended on the Inquirer for news. It lost most of it. On the other hand, it kept a crusade from being launched to reform things at the city’s miserable failure of a convention center.
“They don’t hand out prizes for
pissing people off,” Cipriano notes. “And that’s what the job of journalism often is. To
create a newsroom that Ed Rendell wouldn’t feel comfortable in.”
For a scorecard as to who is on what side in the Marimow fight — owners Lewis Katz and H.F. Lenfest want to keep him and owner New Jersey Democrat boss George Norcross with Publisher Bob Hall want him gone — visit here. Tidbits include that the rage aimed at Marimow is based on a claim that he leaked a plan to cut the paper’s editorial pages by 50 percent and the paper has lost 24 percent of our readers in the last year. Free clue, maybe normalizing homosexuality is not as popular as you guys seem to think it is.
Hat tip Bob Guzzardi
The latest Alliance for Audited Media report puts the print circulation of The Philadelphia Inquirer at just 184,827 with its digital circulation at 67,958 and branded editions at 54,048 for a total of circulation of 306,832. This is a drop of 18,458 from last March.
The area the Inquirer covers has a population of 5.77 million. Even including the digital readers that’s not a real good penetration.
In its heyday, the Inky’s print circulation was over a half million.
Philadelphia Inquirer Still In Decline
Philadelphia Inquirer gossip columnist Dan Gross resigned, Jan. 16, as head of the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia to take a buyout package.
“My decision was not based on fear but on opportunity,” he said.
Perhaps he has gotten an offer to captain an Italian cruise ship.
Interstate General Media L.L.C., the parent company of the Inky, Daily News and Philly.com, has told the 550 members of the Guild. whose rank and file includes newsroom and advertising employees. that it wants to cut $8 million in wages and benefits from their contract which expires in October.
Those greedy capitalistic war pigs. Look for the union label! Strike brothers!
And welcome to Obamaworld where your pay is less and your costs are more.
Newspaper Guild Buyout Package
The Philadelphia Inquirer, owned by Democrats and wholly out of the closet, has made themselves today’s (Sept. 16) front page lead story with a report of their own poll claiming that “Obama lead widens after convention”.
As one of the few remaining who still even occasionally glances at the once mighty Philadelphia Inquirer, here are some observations about today’s, July 25, publication.
Reader TomC submitted a link to a Philadelphia Inquirer review puffing the latest acting gig of Jane Fonda, a person about whom many still have bitter memories of her support for the cruel, freedom-hating North Vietnamese communists in the middle of our war with them.
The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News purchased for $562 million in 2006 was announced sold yesterday, April 2, to the Democrat boss of New Jersey for $55 million.
So, in another six years will the sale price be $5.3 million?
Ed Rendell Media Mogul Has Problem
Famed political strategist James Carville once referred to Pennsylvania as two major cities with Alabama in between. What an insult to Alabama.
The folks in the nation’s fifth-largest state – all of them – are the backwards ones, the sad result of refusing to hold their leaders accountable for broken campaign promises and abject failures. All the while, their neighboring states – AKA “the competition” – continue to make gains at Pennsylvania’s expense.
Ohio and West Virginia are successfully courting natural
gas and oil companies, which are beginning to exit Pennsylvania.
Indiana is thriving after enacting comprehensive statewide school choice
and becoming a Right To Work state, where compulsory unionism is no
required as a condition of employment.
New Jersey (yes, Jersey!)
can woo companies across the river because of faith that a real leader,
Chris Christie, is righting the ship. Everyone else on the planet can
buy liquor easier and cheaper than Pennsylvanians. And corruption, both
criminal and institutionalized, remains rampant, killing optimism and
trampling the hope that you can beat City Hall.
From Ed Rendell
to Tom Corbett (is there a difference?), a lack of leadership has left
Pennsylvania on the precipice, its citizens staring into the abyss of
permanent mediocrity, paralyzed by fear to take the risks necessary to
forge ahead. Such a malaise is anathema to employers looking for
economic stability, a less hostile atmosphere and a better educational
system.
While that lack of leadership is inexcusable, there is
another, even more important factor as to why the state finds itself in
such a precarious situation: a media that has sold its soul, forsaking
its most basic mission of holding everyone accountable, with a “no
sacred cows” approach. For far too long, stories that needed to be told
were relegated to the dustbin. And unsavory politicians and business
leaders counted on that. Without an aggressive press, it was, and
remains, the Wild West where bad guys operate with impunity.
There is no better example of the media’s fall from grace than that of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Once a paper of national significance that took a bulldog approach to
its reporting, it has since become a shell of its former self, an
also-ran full of AP feeds and local fluff stories of virtually no
interest.
The Inky really jumped the tracks when it was “led”
by Brian Tierney, who, along with investors, paid over half a billion
for the paper (and the Daily News) in 2006.
Mired in debt,
Tierney did the unthinkable – he approached then-Gov. Rendell for a
taxpayer-funded bailout to keep the papers afloat in 2009, a story that
Freindly Fire broke ( http://freindlyfirezone.com/home/item/43-possible-inquirer-bailout-draws-ire
) and was picked up by the Wall Street Journal in its harshly-worded
editorial “Bad News In Philadelphia – The Worst Bailout Idea So Far:
Newspapers.”
WSJ Link
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123353263226537457.html
Predictably,
Rendell was ready and willing to lend that helping hand. But as
negative fallout for the bailout plan grew, the deal fell apart and the
papers filed for bankruptcy.
Despite what common sense
unquestionably tells us – that a taxpayer-funded newspaper would in fact
be an “adjunct of the state,” as the WSJ so adroitly described it – the
players in that ill-fated bailout attempt saw nothing wrong with their
actions.
Thankfully, Tierney is out of the picture, having lost
the papers to an investor group who held much of the original debt. But
incomprehensibly, the situation has come full circle. Now the current
owners want out, and it has been reported that none other than Ed
Rendell has been approached to put together an investor group to
possibly buy the papers.
Really? Ed Rendell? How is that even remotely possible?
Where
is the journalistic integrity in working with the very man who stood
cocked, ready to unleash millions in taxpayer funds to bail out an
“independent” media entity? It’s no secret that it has become
increasingly difficult for papers to make a profit in the age of The New
Media, but having Rendell as your “Go-To” man underscores just how
desperate the situation has become.
Taking marching orders from elected officials destroys the very essence of being a journalist and jeopardizes the unique constitutional protections afforded to media members. Sure, Ed Rendell is a private citizen now, but his mentality – how he sees the role of the government working hand-in-hand with the media – has undoubtedly not changed.
The last thing the region
needs is an investor group led by political insiders and
ideologically-supercharged individuals with aggressive personal agendas.
As painful as it would be for the thousands of hard-working folks at
the those newspapers, it would be better for the entire entity to close
its doors than be associated with folks who may, at any given time, make
a pitch for public financing.
And while past performance is not indicative of future results, it’s a damn good bet.
Better
to have no paper at all than one that prostrates itself at the feet of
the very people it purports to objectively cover. And since the
Philadelphia newspapers have been anything but a watchdog over the last
six years, churning out less than a handful of quality investigations,
the bad guys would see virtually no difference, since they’re not
exactly sweating investigative reporters knocking on their doors.
But the behavior of the Inquirer’s
ownership should come as no surprise, given that it recently accepted a
$2.9 million loan from the City of Philadelphia to assist the company
move to a new headquarters. Yes, the same city, the same Mayor and the
same City Council that the newspapers are supposed to be objectively
covering. Is nothing scared anymore?
Where The Media Went Wrong
The
sad reality is that The Fourth Estate has abdicated its sacred
responsibility of keeping American institutions honest and true. No
longer respected as the entity which holds feet to the fire and follows
investigations wherever they may lead, the American media has instead
become part and parcel of the Establishment. Too many journalists play
the “go-along, get-along” game – some because it’s easy, others because
they want to be liked, still others who are afraid they will lose
“access” if they ask the tough questions.
These people have
forgotten that their profession does not lend itself to having
“friends,” since nothing and no one should ever be off the table. The
result of these close alliances is blatant conflicts of interest, both
personal and professional. Once that line is crossed, it is nearly
impossible to return.
No medium is immune from this malady. Those
in television, radio, newspaper and internet are all complicit. As an
entity, the media has fallen down on its most basic journalistic
responsibilities, losing its integrity, and ultimately its credibility,
along the way.
Consequently, the public’s view of the media is at
an historic low. And while complaints abound that the media is biased,
which to a certain extent it is, this is but a symptom of a much greater
illness. A slant towards liberalism or conservatism is wrong, to be
sure, but inherent laziness and, by extension, incompetence, are the
first problems that must be rectified. Competence and vision will trump
bias every time.
Resurrecting the media’s image is a Herculean
task. And when the free press reaches the point where it is no longer
believed, it stands on the edge of becoming completely irrelevant.
Whether
it is nauseating nonstop coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s funeral
procession or feel-good fluff stories in our nation’s pre-eminent
newspapers, the lack of hard-hitting investigative reporting and
aggressive interviews with top national and international leaders is
appalling. Producers and editors are constantly looking over their
shoulders at the competition, choosing to push out content to be like
“every other station,” passing on golden opportunities to be different,
to be journalists – to be leaders.
These people spend more time trying to keep their jobs than actually doing them.
There
is a certain irony here. If media executives produced the quality work
that the American people expect, their ratings would skyrocket, and
advertisers would pay a premium. The biggest myth being propagated about
the bankruptcy of media companies is that they are victims of the
economy. Nothing could be further from the truth.
They are victims of their own ineptitude.
Americans
still have an unquenchable thirst for the news, but they are
increasingly tuning out the mainstream media because the content is
utterly lacking of substance.
The solution is simple – it’s just
not easy. Nothing and no one should be off the table. Not politicians,
government officials, businessmen, media personalities, sports stars,
nor celebrities. With no agenda except the truth, the media should
pursue stories with no boundaries and no restrictions.
Americans
don’t gravitate to question marks, but exclamation points. It’s time to
put the exclamation point back in the American press, not through new
technologies and gimmicks, but by pursuing the only thing that matters:
the truth.
As the voice in the classic baseball movie Field Of
Dreams commanded, “Build it and they will come.” In the same way, if the
media gets off its duff and starts producing content worthy of the
world’s best press, readers and viewers will come – in unprecedented
numbers.
Unfortunately, if Ed Rendell takes over Philadelphia’s newspapers, the ballpark will be empty before the new game even begins.
Rendell Inquirer Rescue Attempt — The denizens of the Philadelphia Inquirer are wishin’ and hopin’ and, well not prayin’ of course, that their sinking ship is purchased by a group of city business leaders organized by famous Philadelphia sports fan Ed Rendell who one-time chaired the Democrat National Committee and was once our governor.
Well, I’m praying for their success! Democrat money should be thrown down Democrat rat holes!
Of course, one kind of wonders why Ed Snider is allegedly a party to this. Maybe it’s a Francisco Anconia-type of ploy.