The Inquirer’s squabbling owners

The cheers, applause and hugs that greeted Marimow’s return to the newsroom last Friday reflected a quaint article of journalistic faith: We journalists like to fancy ourselves the heart and soul of the operation. Yet having edited seven publications (including BSR) over the past 47 years, I have grudgingly concluded that, at the end of the day, it’s neither the editor nor the publisher but the owner who determines the tone of a media operation.

Alan Halpern, the legendary editor of Philadelphia Magazine from 1951 to 1980, was properly credited with converting that publication from a Chamber of Commerce puff sheet to the first of America’s slick urban monthlies, but in fact that great transformation didn’t begin until 1961, when Philadelphia’s owner Arthur Lipson died and was succeeded by his feisty son, D. Herbert Lipson. The equally legendary editor Eugene Roberts was surely instrumental in transforming the Inquirer from one of America’s most despised newspapers into the winner of an unprecedented 17 Pulitzer Prizes during his 18-year stewardship from 1972 to 1990; but it’s also safe to say that Roberts couldn’t have exercised his magic had the Inquirer not been sold in 1969 by the insecure and vindictive Walter Annenberg (on whose watch the Inquirer won no Pulitzers at all in 29 years) to the Knight family’s newspaper dynasty.

Four sales in six years

My own alma mater, the Wall Street Journal, was once the most trusted brand in journalism, but it surrendered that reputation upon its sale in 2007 to the meddlesome Rupert Murdoch— not so much through Murdoch’s meddling but because his reputation preceded him, and consequently many of the Journal’s best people, from managing editor Marcus Brauchli on down, decamped for the Washington Post, the New York Times and other respectable venues.

So the critical question for Philadelphians, I would argue, is not who edits the Inquirer but who owns it. The answer is less than reassuring.

The Inquirer and its sister, the Daily News, have been sold four times since 2006. Their current ownership consortium was cobbled together last year in a well-meaning but misguided effort to keep Philadelphia’s largest newspaper in local hands, as if the region was better off when the Inquirer was owned by Walter Annenberg rather than the Miami-based Knight chain. The partnership consists of men who’ve made a great deal of money in cable TV, parking garages, energy technology and insurance but lack the experience, independence, wisdom, patience and humility to run a credible news operation.

The owner’s ‘companion’

Four of the company's eight directors answer to the name of Norcross or Katz, and two of them answer to the name of "Dad." The most credibly compromised among them— the insurance executive George Norcross III— is routinely described as a power in South Jersey Democratic politics yet seems to hold no official party position; he relies for his power instead on his fund-raising talents as well as the perception that he is powerful. He presumably saw the Inquirer as a means of enhancing that perception, which in turn leverages his fund-raising capacity, which in turn....

Suffice it to say that it can get a bit confusing when a reporter writing about Norcross the politician draws his paycheck from Norcross the co-managing director. Norcross isn’t merely a newsworthy figure; he’s a newsworthy figure whom Philadelphia Magazine described this year as “The Man Who Destroyed Democracy.” This is a man who shouldn’t be allowed near a professional newsroom, much less own one.

This role confusion among the Inquirer's owners is compounded by the sort of incestuous conflicts usually found in Third World dictatorships. Norcross installed his 25-year-old daughter Alessandra as a director of the Inky’s parent company as well as vice president and manager of the company’s website, philly.com, despite her lack of previous media experience. (Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall at her annual job evaluation?)

The former parking magnate Lewis Katz, Norcross's co-managing director (and current chief antagonist), has also placed an offspring on the papers' board: his son Drew, whose background is in outdoor advertising. The elder Katz is delicately described in news reports as the "partner" or "companion" of the Inquirer’s city editor, Nancy Phillips, from which description reasonable readers may infer that Katz and Phillips regularly engage in petting, fondling, soul kissing and similar activities likely to undermine their objective assessments of each other’s corporate performance.

Publisher’s strategy

The Inquirer owners also— as has become evident since they started suing each other in October— lack the sense of common purpose or tradition or loyalty that’s found even in the most dysfunctional newspaper families (the Chandlers of Los Angeles, say, or the Newhouses of New York). They naively believed last year that a signed agreement among themselves not to interfere in the papers’ news coverage would protect the papers’ integrity. They were clueless about the value of such an agreement in the real world, especially among wealthy men with multiple agendas who are accustomed to getting their own way.

The Inquirer’s ownership team began to splinter this year after Robert Hall, the publisher, developed a clear if questionable commercial strategy for the Inquirer’s survival in the digital age: stress fluff and local news, especially in the suburbs. Hall also perceived that, notwithstanding Marimow’s impressive journalistic credentials, Marimow was unsuited to lead the Inky into the digital future. But Marimow, who was professionally trained to focus on important news, refused to buy Hall’s vision.

Under normal circumstances, Hall would have replaced Marimow with an 18-year-old computer geek. (God knows we could use one at BSR.) Yet Hall needed Marimow’s presence to maintain the Inky’s credibility with its journalists as well as its readers. So instead of firing Marimow, Hall tried to nudge Marimow into changing his coverage and firing certain editors. When Marimow refused, Hall fired him, or tried to.

Marimow’s response

To sum up: Hall tried to meddle with the Inquirer’s news coverage, and the owners who had pledged not to meddle with Hall or the newsroom are now meddling with Hall and the newsroom, all the while enlisting a Common Pleas Court judge to meddle in the newsroom at considerable public expense. Which leaves one key question: Where are the grownups?

Last Friday, when Marimow was asked about his future at the Inquirer, he replied, “The answer is, I don’t know. I intend to work as hard as I can and edit as well as I can for the future.”

That reply suggests that at least one wise man may emerge from this fracas. Print newspapers like the Inquirer may well be going the way of the typewriter and the landline phone. But even at flourishing publications, as I’ve suggested before, good editors keep their bags packed and treat every issue as if it’s their first as well as their last.

Marimow has now been fired twice and rehired twice at the Inquirer. He’s 66. He surely knows that he’s not here for the long run. But in the long run, of course, we’re all dead. Better to give it your best shot until the axe falls again, as inevitably it will.