SOME OF YOU REMEMBER
when I worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer, the grand white lady on North Broad Street, the ivory "Tower of Truth" (we Inky true believers used to call it with tongue on cheek) that still competes with City Hall as a unique spire in the city's historical skyline. Well, sir and ma'am, that building goes up for auction Tuesday in New York, along with the rest of the holdings of the company that owns the Inquirer and the Daily News and the Philly.com website.I worked for 23 years in the fifth floor newsroom of this venerable building built in 1922. As I still tell people about why I left the best job I ever had 15 years ago, "I was the canary in the coal mine. I could sense the oxygen leaving the room."
So much has happened to The Inquirer and to newspapers in general since I left, my complaints or reasons for leaving seem almost quaint when compared with the survival issues facing print journalism. What once seemed unthinkable -- like the Knight-Ridder Newspaper Corporation selling off all its newspapers, including it's flagships, the Inquirer and Miami Herald -- is now a distant betrayal.
Bankruptcy of the new ownership? That is so 2009. A public auction for the body and soul of Philadelphia's most storied journalistic enterprise? Tain't nothin' but the latest flaming hoop the Inquirer must leap through to survive.
It's no longer shocking. It's become the newspaper business as usual in the 21st Century. And it totally sucks.
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