Besides the sea-battered cap your own Man Overboard! dons to write this column, I've worn a few other hats at City Paper this past year, including, until this week, that of "news editor," which title I'm vacating for now to focus on reporting. Don't try to steer the ship and watch for white whales at the same time, say I. But before I get back to scrubbing the deck, one last "editorial" thought:

Last week, staff writer Daniel Denvir published a story citing anonymous sources who allege that at least three members of the School District communications office spent taxpayer time orchestrating what amounted to a personal PR campaign for former Superintendent Arlene Ackerman. District officials neither affirmed nor denied these allegations.

We felt it an important story, and the good people at philly.com, the website for both the Inquirer and Daily News (and with which CP has a content-sharing partnership), apparently agreed, featuring it prominently. On Saturday, the Daily News cited Denvir's story in its own reporting, noting that Councilman Bill Green has called for an investigation.

Not so the Inquirer, which — amid weeks of hard-hitting School District stories by a phenomenal reporting team — has so far reported neither the allegations nor the call for investigation, which means, for its most dedicated readers, that the news simply never happened.

It wouldn't be the first time the Inquirer eschewed following a story generated outside the walls of its Broad Street fortress. In April, CP intern Emily Apisa reported that La Salle professor Jack Rappaport had hired strippers for a school lecture. It was a heck of a scoop — "strippers" and "professor" in the same headline! — and went viral immediately. Apisa's story had also cited anonymous sources — meaning other news outlets would have to credit her reporting or leave the story be. The Daily News chose the former, citing Apisa's work in a follow-up. But the Inquirer ignored it (though an Inquirer reporter did ask Apisa to share sources), waiting several days before running an unusual article about how La Salle University's student newspaper had been working on a "more authoritative" version than ours.

Maybe it's just that ol' spirit of competition, which once drove the city's seven morning and six evening newspapers to be at one another's throats — back, that is, in 1892. But in these lean times, who wins in that fight anymore? I suggest the Inquirer lower its drawbridge: We make good news here — and you'll just love those page hits.

Isaiah Thompson is now scrubbing the deck. Reach him at isaiah.thompson@citypaper.net or @isaiah_thompson.