Vol. 129: What’s wrong with the Inquirer?

The flawed vision of the Lenfest Institute

First, the good news about the Philadelphia Inquirer:

—Although, thanks to the Internet, 3,200 American newspapers have vanished over the past 20 years; and although the Inquirer’s mighty parent company, the Knight-Ridder chain, itself ceased to exist in 2006; and although the Inquirer changed owners six times over the next ten years, the Inquirer has survived as the subsidiary of the not-for-profit Lenfest Institute for Journalism. It’s the largest nonprofit newspaper in America.

—Because the Inquirer is run by public-spirited citizens instead of spineless gazillionaires, it has avoided the fate of the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, or CBS News, whose owners have been unable to resist the temptation to meddle with the product to avoid offending the Trump administration.

—Today’s Inquirer still provides a small cadre of writers whose work even a jaded fusspotch like me finds essential, like the foreign affairs columnist Trudy Rubin, who combines a lifetime of insights and contacts with the courage to head for the world’s hotspots on a moment’s notice; Inga Saffron, with her intelligent and impassioned examinations of architecture and urban planning; the psychologically sensible syndicated advice columnist Carolyn Hax, who invariably tells me something I hadn’t thought of; the indefatigably picky dining critic Crag LaBan; and, of course, “Doonesbury.”

Boston Globe’s lesson

The problem is that the Inquirer’s current business model offers no long-term solution for journalism. At best, it’s a transitional holding action until a better solution can be found.

Although you and I and maybe a dozen other troglodytes over 50 still yearn for the smell and touch of newsprint, the simple fact is that print newspapers as we know them are going the way of electric typewriters and long-playing records, and for good reason: The Internet delivers news and commentary instantly, conveniently, inexpensively, and even interactively without sacrificing a single tree or wasting a single gallon of gas on a single delivery truck.

The perverse but effective business model that sustained newspapers for a century— enterprising journalism, funded by department stores, car dealers, and help wanted ads— has now collapsed, and a long-run formula for making money from good journalism has yet to take its place. But it will be found between now and the end of time, and more likely in the next few years. And it will be found, I would argue, not by a noble not-for-profit but by hungry entrepreneurs.

In the 2015 movie Spotlight, the Boston Globe’s news editor, Marty Baron, reminded his colleagues that they labor under constant pressure (presumably from their stockholders and the marketplace) to make the Globe vitally important in Bostonians’ lives. By contrast, no one’s life savings are tied up in a foundation— and without that personal survival motive, the urge to innovate becomes less urgent.

New priorities

You may not have noticed, as I have, that the Inquirer’s central mission has changed since the Lenfest Institute took charge in 2016. The old Inquirer served its readers; the new Inquirer serves virtuous causes. “We recommit ourselves to the anti-racist mission we set in the summer of 2020,” publisher Elizabeth Hughes declared of one such cause in 2022.

The old Inquirer’s promotional slogan was “The Inquirer: It can make your day!” The new Inquirer runs full-page ads urging readers to support a free and independent press by donating funds to the Lenfest Institute.

The old Inquirer, similarly, ran headlines aimed at seducing its customers into reading a story. But under the Lenfest regime, catchy headlines are frowned upon. In 2020 one catchy headline was deemed insensitive to the Black Lives Matter movement (it read, “Buildings Matter, Too”). The executive editor, Stan Wischnowski, issued a cringing apology. Then Wischnowski— a veteran of 20 years at the Inquirer, ten of them as editor— was forced to resign anyway.

Vanishing opinion page

Or consider the editorial page (now rechristened the “Opinion” page). In any given community, editorial writers are virtually the only people paid to spend their waking hours evaluating public issues. The Inquirer reminds its readers every day that its editorial board is “a group of journalists separate from the newsroom who meet frequently to discuss and debate issues.” Presumably these professionals have useful perceptions to share with their readers.

Yet on most days, the Inquirer Opinion page consists of a cartoon plus letters from readers whose opinions are decidedly unprofessional. Editorials themselves appear at most only three days a week— and when they do appear, they’re buried at the bottom of the page, beneath the letters. It makes you wonder about the Inquirer’s priorities.

But maybe that’s just as well. Here, for example, is the conclusion to the Inky’s hard-hitting July 6 editorial about the city’s plans for next year’s celebrations: “The promise of 2026 is grand, and the stakes of being on the world stage are clear. It is up to elected officials whether the city will bask in the spotlight or be blinded by the glare.”

Oh, and Saturday’s Inquirer skips the Opinion page altogether.

And who, you ask, decided to eliminate the Saturday editorial page? That’s a policy left over from the Inky’s former part-owner, the South Jersey Democratic boss George Norcross, who objected to editorials because they usually made him look bad. Norcross was bought out in a bitter fight with Lewis Katz and Gerald Lenfest in 2014. But Katz died in a plane crash only days later, and the revival of the Saturday editorial page was forgotten in the shuffle. As I said, folks had other priorities.

Who’s in charge?

In any case, the “Opinion” label on the Inky’s editorial page (which, granted, is also used nowadays by the New York Times) always makes me wince. As my hero, the late Vermont Royster of the Wall Street Journal, remarked to me when I was a Journal reporter, “You can get opinions from any cab driver. What matters is the insight you bring to the reader.” Insight for the reader! Who’d a thunk it?

You might also wonder who, exactly, runs the Inquirer’s Editorial/Opinion section. Those saddled with that responsibility over the past 50 years— Creed Black, Ed Guthman, David Boldt, Jane Eisner, and Harold Jackson— may have differed in style and temperament, but each of them wrote a weekly column that at least conveyed the sense that they cared about what was going on in Philadelphia and the world. Today the Inquirer masthead lists a “managing editor for opinion” named Richard G. Jones, who has yet to be seen or heard from on the Opinion page. Maybe he's just shy.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for a place where Philadelphians argue passionately and knowledgeably about public issues, your best bet these days is not the Inquirer at all, but probably the online Philadelphia Citizen, edited by Larry Platt, formerly editor of Philadelphia Magazine and the Philadelphia Daily News.

What would Roberts do?

Early in 2019, a documentary film tribute to the Inquirer’s glory years under its legendary executive editor, Eugene Roberts, was screened at a Philadelphia theater, attended by a large crowd of graying Inquirer alumni, including Roberts himself, by then 86 years old. During the question period that followed, I asked Roberts: Suppose that today you were 40 years old again and national editor of the New York Times, as you were in 1972 when the Inquirer came calling. And suppose the Lenfest Institute for Journalism invited you to revamp the Inquirer, as the Knight chain did in 1972. Would you accept that offer?

Roberts diplomatically declined to speculate about a hypothetical situation. My guess was that today he would stick with the Times and its profit-driven family owners rather than risk restarting his career with an untested not-for-profit. But upon further reflection, Roberts would never receive such an offer from the Inquirer today, because bold gambits rarely emanate from not-for-profit institutions.

Winston Churchill’s theory

So, what’s the ideal model? A for-profit corporation must answer to investors. A sole proprietor (like Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post) has no check on his idiosyncrasies. A family ownership (like the McLeans in Philadelphia, the Sulzbergers in New York, the Grahams in Washington, the Otises and Chandlers in Los Angeles, or the Bancrofts at the Wall Street Journal) can be torn apart by sibling rivalries and cousin jealousies. And a not-for-profit tends to be overcautious, because why take risks when you have no skin in the game?

There’s no foolproof model for a successful news organization— or any human organization, for that matter. But at the end of the day, I feel about profit-driven journalism much the way Winston Churchill felt about democracy: It’s the worst of all possible systems, except for all the other systems.

H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest (1930-2018) was a civic-minded cable TV entrepreneur who gained control of the Inquirer in 2014 and then donated it to his newly created Lenfest Institute two years later. In effect he hoped to preserve the Inquirer as a gift to Philadelphians. But his well-intended gesture reminds me of an observation made more than a century ago by another famous philanthropist, Julius Rosenwald: “It is almost always easier to make a million dollars honestly than to dispose of it wisely.”

“Where better than Philadelphia to invent the future of a free press?” asked a full-page Lenfest Institute fund-raising ad in the July Fourth Inquirer. The ad listed the names of 135 Philadelphians who’ve each donated $2,500 or more to the Institute. They mean well, I’m sure. But if you’ve read this far, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that my name was not among them.

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s new memoir, The Education of a Journalist: My Seventy Years on the Frontiers of Free Speech. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com

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