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Activists organize on behalf of newspapers
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
Activists organize on behalf of newspapers
If Philly.com commenters are anything to go by, Philadelphians' affection for our dailies is of the tough love variety. A group of advocates is hoping that genuine support for the Inquirer and Daily News lies beneath the vitriol.
Save Philly Papers, a campaign organized by activist-about-town Marc Stier, has started an online petition and is planning other actions to call attention to the plight of reporters, who have been pushed by new owners to renegotiate their contracts and most recently eliminate the role of seniority from contract negotiations. Owners had promised "patient capital" and then recently threatened to "liquidate" the papers if more favorable contracts could not be obtained.
"After getting what they wanted economically from the Newspaper Guild, to ask them to give up seniority, suggested to me and others that they don't understand what makes the newspapers valuable," says Stier. "It's the reporters who know this city, who understand it, who've been here a while and who know when politicians and athletes and others are lying to them."
Stier says he consulted with the Newspaper Guild before launching the campaign, but that it's independent. "I and others reached out to the Newspaper Guild and asked them if they would like our help. ... They said they'd welcome it."
So can a campaign for public opinion make a difference here? Stier says, it's hard to say. But, he points out, "a guy like [part owner] Gerry Lenfest, who has done so much for this region and for the city, and who's been honored by people from all walks of life. … Does he want to go down in history as the guy that killed the Philadelphia Inquirer?"
If I could get 500,000 of you to commit $100 each, we could by the parent company and turn these papers into consumer cooperatives. They wouldn't be some wealthy person's vanity project. They wouldn't be some investment group's profit line. These properties wouldn't get gutted and the remains left for the vultures. They would be in business to keep reporting the news, for the public. Come on! Anyone want to go in with me on this?— nala- Great idea. Corporations are corporations, whether they are oil companies or newspapers. Probably why they have such a strong anti-union bias in their editorials.
Let's do it. Is Mr. Stier's organization open to this?— pachysandra
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