Philadelphia
I LIVE in Philadelphia. I have for nearly 40 of my 57 years. It is a wonderful city but also a corrupt one. Power is concentrated in the hands of a select few, who sometimes act in the public interest but too often act in their own interests or the interests of friends who have hot lines into their ears.
The best defense against that, the public’s only defense, has always been the existence of the city’s two newspapers, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News. They are a shell of what they once were. But the papers, in spite of endless staff cuts over the past two decades, still report. They still investigate. They still provide immeasurable value.
And now the city stands to effectively lose them. Some of the hedge funds that bought the papers’ parent company out of bankruptcy in 2010 are now considering selling out to a consortium of investors organized by Edward G. Rendell, one of the most powerful politicians in the modern history of Pennsylvania. Mr. Rendell says he will have no financial stake and is still reportedly looking for other investors, but it seems to be the only bid in play.
Personally, I like Mr. Rendell. I wrote a book about him. But he is a former district attorney of the city, a former mayor of the city, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and, since 2011, a former governor of Pennsylvania. Not even the press baron William Randolph Hearst had a résumé as fraught with potential conflicts of interest.
If the sale goes through, Philadelphia will become the first major city in the country to actually cease to have a real daily newspaper. There will still be print and online products, sure, but those products will be owned by a group of power-hungry politicians and politically connected businessmen who, far from respecting independent journalism, despise it.
The consortium Mr. Rendell has gathered includes Edward M. Snider, a legendary sports magnate in the city. It includes Lewis R. Katz, who made a fortune in the parking business and makes generous campaign contributions and expects something back. (I know because once, while covering Mr. Rendell for my book, I overheard Mr. Katz on a speakerphone complaining to the then-mayor that a law firm he had fancied had not gotten bond work.) And it includes George E. Norcross III, a Democratic kingpin who has basically owned South Jersey politics for years and yet is so thin-skinned that he has complained to reporters who called him a politico.
These men may be more self-absorbed in their own agendas than the former district attorney, mayor, D.N.C. chief and governor. The group covers the waterfront of virtually everything that is important in Philadelphia — local politics, state politics, national politics, big development, casino gambling, sports. The only segment missing is the unions, and Mr. Rendell reportedly tried that, approaching a union leader who is currently suing an Inquirer writer for libel.
Newspapers all over the country are folding or struggling. Billionaires have invested in them. So have powerful developers. The paradigm of ownership is changing, but none have come close to being taken over by a group that is the like of the Rendell consortium.
Mr. Rendell’s explanation for the group’s interest in the papers is that its members see the possible purchase as a civic and philanthropic duty, given the media company’s rapidly declining financial health. It sounds noble. Perhaps it is noble.
But it is also a stunning change of heart. To say that these men have a reputation for complaining to editors about their coverage, no matter how petty the issue, would not be an overstatement. The more vigorous the reporting, the more they hated it. Nor would it be an overstatement to say that Mr. Rendell as a politician had a penchant for screaming and yelling at reporters.
The truth is, besides that, Mr. Rendell was a wonderful mayor. He is basically well-intentioned. I would like to believe that his motives for wanting to organize the purchase of the papers are pure. But I don’t. As one of the best fund-raisers in the history of modern politics, he could have gone to any number of people with far greater records of philanthropy and far fewer political and financial hooks into the city and region. Why not?
These men want the papers because they crave power and will always crave power. They like to win and they have always liked to win. They can erect the biggest firewall they want between themselves and the papers. It won’t matter. As the owners of The Inquirer and The Daily News and the Web site Philly.com, they will have successfully toppled the last enemy. The newspapers will become their personal Gutenberg press, which effectively means that the one city in the country that needs a newspaper the most will not have one.
Buzz Bissinger, a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1981 to 1988, is the author of "A Prayer for the City."
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