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Why Philly will suffer if new owners close the Daily News
The Daily News speaks to Philadelphians in their native language, which is direct, punchy and somewhat parochial. Sometimes it is intelligent, sometimes maddeningly ignorant. Without it, thousands here will simply not read a newspaper.
Why Philly will suffer if new owners close the Daily News
The sign welcoming visitors to the Inquirer and Daily News' new building's marquee on Market East will not, KYW Newsradio reported last week, include the logo of the embattled Daily News.
Or, maybe it will, it turns out.
“Don’t worry, our proud Daily News logo WILL be prominently displayed on the side of our new headquarters,” Assistant City Editor Josh Cornfield wrote in an email to staff. Publisher Greg Osberg told him (and KYW) that the Historical Commission rejected including both logos: the old-timey Inquirer font would be a better fit for the historic Strawbridge's entrance.
I don't believe Greg Osberg, and here's why: when KYW asked Philadelphia Media Network lawyer Michael Sklaroff if the Daily News would be included on the sign, he “cut off the interview, huddled privately with his clients, which included Jerry Steinbrink, chief brand officer for the company that owns the newspapers. Then Sklaroff returned to say he’d have no further comment.”
And Historical Commission staffers later contradicted Osberg: the proposal was always and only for the Inquirer logo.
Does this sound familiar?
This is either just ham-handed publicity from a news company that excels at ham-handed publicity (see this year's notorious efforts to censor news coverage of the papers' sale and then deny that it ever did so) or early evidence that the new owners (who have retained Osberg) plan to shut the tabloid down.
It honestly could be both.
Either way, this is obviously a bad omen for the Daily News, the scrappy but hard-hitting Philadelphia tabloid whose newsroom has for many years lived in constant fear of annihilation. If it does reflect a more sinister motive on management's part, it would be a cruelly passive-aggressive away to deliver the news that they're going to shut the place down.
And right before a happy week for the dailies.
The Inquirer's (in some ways, I believe, undeserved) Pulitzer Prize win has boosted morale, as did the Daily News Pulitzer win two years ago for uncovering police corruption.
Nonetheless, the two papers have moved to consolidate some operations, share content and eliminate redundancies while ostensibly maintaining two distinct identities. Though it has without a doubt enriched the Daily News content-wise, the so-called “newsroom merger” reignited fears that management planned to axe the paper.
"This fear feels more real to me," Pulitzer-winning Daily News reporter Wendy Ruderman told City Paper at the time. "People are very worried that it's all some sort of trick. It's hard to trust management, even though you want to."
The sign fiasco reinforces an aura of apocalyptic inevitability around the decline of the Daily News. And there is an argument to be made that one stronger paper would be better than two hobbled ones. After all, the Inquirer has many fine reporters, and would only be stronger with the likes of Wendy Ruderman reinforcing its ranks. But if the new owners kill the Daily News, Philly will lose. And lose big time.
I'm a Daily News subscriber. And so are people across Philadelphia, especially in its buoyant and beat-up working-class neighborhoods (and yes, on William Bender's Delco mean streets too). You open the front of the paper and it's Philly politics, neighborhoods and crime. You open the back and it's Philly sports. OK, sometimes the front and back are Philly sports. But not too often.
There are tens of thousands of Daily News readers, I'm confidant, who will never pick up the broadsheet Inquirer, with its reporters stretched from South Jersey to the Main Line and front page wire stories on Washington and Afghanistan.
The Daily News speaks to Philadelphians in their native language, which is direct, punchy and somewhat parochial. Sometimes it is intelligent, sometimes maddeningly ignorant. (And yes, I think there is even a place for the maddeningly ignorant: if Stu Bykofksy left, his fans would just go somewhere else—but for god's sake fact-check the man!)
And like Philly, the Daily News is tough. The editorial page, and editorial cartoonist Signe Wilkinson, speak truth to power from City Hall to Harrisburg and Washington. And do remember that it was People Paper reporter Dave Gambacorta who fought back against Osberg's censorship.
The Daily News, like the Inquirer, is a publication that blunt economic forces have diminished in size and scope. But the hard-working reporters who remain provide what is still the backbone of local journalism—and that goes for residents, power brokers and for non-daily journalists like me.
Stu Bykofsky and I may not like each other (you should see our touching email correspondence), and Philly Clout reporter Chris Brennan might just hate me. But this isn't personal — it's publicational. And I love that publication. Every goddamn weekday morning.
[Thanks to KYW's Mike Dunn for a correction on my lead: his original report was that the Daily News logo would not appear on the new building's marquee, not that it wouldn't appear on the new building at all]
It seems obvious that the new owners are trying to kill the DN. As a faithful reader for many years, I find this truly upsetting. Who are these arrogant rich people to decide to do away with a Philadelphia institution? DO NOT let the Daily News die!— brinsley
Comment removed.
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