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What exactly's going on at the Inky & Daily News?
In case you missed it yesterday: Management at the Daily News appears to have taken down information posted on a Daily News blog by reporter David Gambacorta about the anticipated sale of Philadelphia Media Network (PMN).
You can read a fuller and better version of all of this at Newsworks’ Dave Davies’ blog Off Mic. and at the media buzz blog of Jim Romenesko.
Yesterday afternoon, Gambacorta posted the following (preserved thanks to Romenesko), which refers to two groups of potential buyers — one headed up by Ed Rendell, and another by developer Bart Blatstein.
Developer Bart Blatstein is leading a group of local investors who want to purchase Philadelphia Media Network, the parent company of the Daily News, Inquirer, Philly.com and SportsWeek.
The group, dubbed Philly Hometown Media LLC, is comprised of Blatstein; Jerry Sweeney, the president of the Brandywine Realty Trust; Bill Harvey, a partner at the law firm Klehr Harrison Harvey Branzburg; Harold Honickman, the soda mogul; and Andrew Barroway, a consumer rights litigator.
Blatstein’s development company, Tower Investments, last year purchased PMN’s ivory tower headquarters at Broad and Callowhill streets.
Philly Hometown Media LLC released a statement that read in part:
“We reject the notion that operating the dominant print and online sources for news and information in the Philadelphia area has to be an act of philanthropy.
“If we have learned anything in the last ten years, it’s that Philadelphians, like the rest of the country, have become information junkies.” …..
But that was quicky taken down and replaced with the following paragraph, attributed not to Gambacorta but to staff. (Gambacorta declined to speak to Dave Davies about it (“wisely,” as Davies put it) — but it’s worth noting that union rules allow a reporter to decline to have his or her name attributed to a story he or she doesn’t think is proper).
This blog post has been updated:
A Philadelphia Media Network spokesman today confirmed that the company is not in discussions with Bart Blatstein or the group calling itself Philly Homegrown Media to buy the company that publishes The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Daily News and philly.com.
A statement from Blatstein earlier Tuesday was posted on this blog in which he said his group would like to make a bid for the company.
The company issued no further comment.
So: let the questions begin. Did ownership or upper-management interfere in the editorial process of the Daily News? Did someone kill this story because Gambacorta’s post was inaccurate or for a different reason? Why haven’t these discrepancies been explained by the Daily News’ editorial team? And can we trust anything either paper is reporting on its own possible sale?
This isn’t the first instance in which the editorial integrity of PMN’s reporting on its own business has been questionable.
The Inquirer failed to report that the city was subsidizing part of its anticipated move to Market Street. And, Romenesko reports, it sure looks like the Inquirer also removed a reference to the company’s valuation over the weekend from an article by Inky reporter Andrew Maykuth.
Maykuth initially reported that the company was valued as low as $40 million (the number $100 had been bandied about as a sales price).
While we wait for some answers, we at the City Paper would like to extend our warmest invitation to the good, honest folk at PMN to leak us stuff.
You can reach Isaiah Thompson by email here and follow him on Twitter here.
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