The importance, sway and influence of one of the world’s most dominant 20th century newspapers was the focus of the 1998 collection of essays about the once powerful Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, edited by its former education reporter Peter Binzen, who also wrote Whitetown USA. Dubbed ‘Nearly Everybody Read It,’ a riff off the paper’s legendary [...]

There were a dozen or more daily newspapers in Philadelphia at one time, I hear. Trouble is, I couldn’t seem to find anyone who could name what all of those papers were. So I went and did some good old fashioned research — with some great direction from representatives of the following institutions. Below, find [...]

Metropolitan boosters — men employed in the late 19th century to encourage Americans to move west to burgeoning cities — have been of interest to me lately. I’m interested in how that concept can be brought to modern concepts or urban renewal. I came across a portion of an essay in ‘A companion to the [...]

Happy Fourth of July. A couple weekends ago, while filing a lot of copy, I was engrossed in the 12-part History Channel documentary called America: The Story of Us. It reminded me of what the History Channel does best. In a world where the access to information is endless, the context of that information was [...]

Former Time and New Yorker journalist Calvin Trillin on why there is less drinking in journalism. He references this New York Times story on the changing face of big name journalists. “Being a reporter is only lately a respectable occupation.” Former New York Times reporter Gay Talese telling a story about drinking in his old [...]

The way we have gained information has apparently changed in the past 200 years, according to a really interesting and insightful graphical analysis of those trends by online magazine Baekdal.com. The graphic analysis, as depicted above, aims to give some sense of the how the sources of information developed in common society. It suggests that [...]

Philadelphia was long a breeding ground for some of the most meaningful metro columnists in the country. Some say the newspaper columnist is dying, but it isn’t dead. So who’s the next columnist of record in one of the oldest newspaper cities in the world? Number of Views:442

The history of the Philadelphia Inquirer mirrors the path of all the big gray ladies in the United States. While putting together suggestions for the Inquirer months ago, I came across some interesting reading on the third oldest newspaper in the country, which is nearing its 180th birthday. Follow it and the path of your [...]

I am going to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington D.C. tonight, to get settled and look around town, where I will be covering the inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday. More on that to come. Obama left yesterday from Philadelphia to head to D.C., also making a stop in Delaware. Leaving from Philadelphia is a [...]

Two hundred twenty-two years ago today, famed Apache chief Geronimo surrendered to U.S. and Mexican forces after 25 years of fighting. Now in mainstream culture his legend is reduced to jumping into pools or otherwise inanely leaping. Do you want to make up for the brutal repression of a people and hundreds of years of [...]