By Joel Thurtell
Unbelievable!
Frightening news!
Democrats are poised to take over Philadelphia newspapers!
A former Democratic mayor of Philly who was also a governor of the state is heading a group who plan to acquire the newspapers.
Already, they’re meddling in The Philadelphia Inquirer’s coverage of news about its own takeover by the pols.
Why am I not getting worked up about this travesty?
Maybe because I can’t see what the furor is about.
Other than that The New York Times published on the same day an op-ed column and a business front story about the calamity about to befall Pennsylvanians.
As perceived by The Times.
But wait a minute.
Didn’t those Philadelphia papers, The Inquirer and the News, once belong to the now-extinct newspaper chain, Knight-Ridder?
And we know that K-R had a strict hands-off policy when it came to interfering with news about its “properties” in various towns around the country.
Don’t we?
Um, well, wait a minute.
I was a reporter on the Detroit Free Press from 1984 until 2007. For all but the last two of my years at the paper, the Free Press belonged to Knight-Ridder. In 2005, K-R sold teh Free Press to its partner in Detroit newspapering, Gannett.
For several years in the late 1980s, Knight-Ridder and Gannett joined to lobby the federal government for permission to have a monopoly by joining the business operations of The News and Free Press.
And I seem to remember some, well, interference by the owner of the Free Press in the paper’s editorial stance towards the proposed merger.
I recall the editorial editor of the Detroit Free Press spiking not one, not two, but three drawings by the editorial cartoonist Bill Day because they lampooned Edwin Meese III, then US attorney general.
The Free Press was afraid the cartoons might offend Meese, who was someone with potential authority to approve or disapprove of the proposed merger of the Free Press and News.
The Free Press always bragged that it was On Guard.
Except when it was Off Guard.
And it sure was Off Guard during its quest for the Joint Operating Agreement, which became reality late in 1989. While Knight-Ridder has gone the way of the dodo, the JOA still governs operations of the Free Press and News.
I also seem to recall a certain publisher of the Free Press named David Lawrence publishing a pro-JOA column on Page One of the Free Press.
Was Knight-Ridder using the Free Press as a bully pulpit to persuade the public and especially Michigan politicians to support the papers’ quest for a 100-year monopoly?
Was that interference with the news?
Well, but of course, it can’t compare with what’s going down in Philly, because there it’s potential interference by powerful members of the Democratic party.
It’s one thing for powerful officials of the then second-biggest newspaper chain in the country in alliance with power brokers from Gannett, the biggest chain, to get a business monopoly that would scrap newspaper competition in Detroit for a century.
You could say they interfered not only with news, but with history.
So what’s wrong with that?
That is business the American Way.
If you own a newspaper, you get to manipulate the news.
Isn’t that why people have newspapers?
Ask Rupert Murdoch.
But for a political party to grab control of a newspaper?
Absolutely unconscionable!
Except, hmmm.
Wasn’t the Detroit Free Press once called the Democratic Free Press and Michigan Intelligencer?
Do you mean to tell me that politics and political parties actually birthed newspapers in this country?
Well, then, if newspaper owners traditionally interfere in news about themselves or anything else that pleases them, and if historically, newspapers have been founded by political parties, who gives a rat’s ass about what’s happening to the Inquirer and News in Philadelphia?
Philadelphians and for sure employees of the two papers — especially denizens of the newsroom who likely were the carping sources who squealed panic-stricken to The Times — should be glad someone wants to buy their loser papers.
Nobody else wants to own those papers.
Wake up, kids! You get to keep your jobs.
Journalists always get bent out of shape when somebody else tries to pervert the news.
Here’s a fact they don’t teach in J school:
If you own a newspaper, you get to skew the news.
