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 slogan, the 163-page book has nearly 20 essays from former Bulletin reporters and editors, including its first female and black correspondents. For 135 years, the family owned paper was a powerhouse among a rich daily newspaper tradition in Philadelphia.

A central story line of the book was the Bulletin’s battle with the Inquirer, its chief rival, and how, in the end, the Inquirer, considered by many to be the chain response to the family-owned operation, won. Through all the bluster, I thought there were four primary reasons that rang most true to me:

1. The Bulletin fundamentally failed to innovate, remaining an afternoon daily as circulation fell with growing TV news audiences, increasing transportation costs due to traffic and changing news cycles.
2. The Bulletin failed to develop the revenue to stay competitive, including a premature sale of its nascent TV station, denying alcohol advertising and other funding methods that kept it lagging behind the Knight-Ridder funded Inquirer.
3. The Bulletin resisted aggressive editorial reconfiguration, following the investigative spirit of the 1970s that soared the reputation of the Inquirer behind editor Gene Roberts, and pushed out its own innovative editor George Packard.
4. The Bulletin came up short in following the suburban trend, having its 1947 purchase of the Camden Courier Post denied by the U.S. Department of Justice for anti-monopoly concerns was a large blow.

As I often do when reading something relevant to the news and innovation conversations I so adore, I wanted to share some choice thoughts from the book.

• “…streetwise reporters like Bill Storm, who taught me it was important to always have two kinds of gin: the good stuff for martinis, and lesser brands for fools who might want to mix it with tonic.” (p. ix)
•  ”I was based in the City Hall press room of 212, a place where there was always a pinochle game in progress.” (p. xii)
• In naming the colorful cast of reporters around him, Rem Rieder mentions Harry Karafin, the Inquirer reporter who was later convicted in 1968 of blackmailing sources and died in prison. (p. xii)
• The Bulletin was so focused on its family-friendly image that it was known to have its three-pages of comics airbrushed of any potentially suggestive material, squashed coverage of the much hyped Kinsey sexuality reports and refused liquor ads longer after its competitors gave in to accept the ample resources. (p. 2)
• A claim of 13 daily newspapers in 1905, something I’m trying to confirm. (p. 2)
• The Bulletin’s circulation went from 600,000 in 1942 to 700,000 in 1946 to an all-time peak of 773,943 in 1947, all under the McLean family. (p. 7)
• Part of a 1947 deal to purchase the Philadelphia Record for $13 million, the Bulletin also bought radio station WCAU, which had recently started broadcasting TV to the merely 14,000 televisions in the country. By 1957, WCAU-TV was making more profit than the Bulletin, yet was sold to CBS for $20 million, considered now to be ‘dirt cheap.’ (p. 7)
• In an effort to push into the burgeoning suburbs, the Bulletin also acquired in the deal the then-small Camden Courier-Post, but the U.S. Justice Department forced its divestiture under anti-monopoly policy. (p. 7)
• Robert ‘The Major’ McLean was a legend, leading the Bulletin to being the best selling afternoon newspaper in North America into the 1950s and beyond. (p.
• “In 1951, the newspaper was thriving and the City of Philadelphia seemed to have a lot going for it too…three decades later, virtually all of those institutions had moved out of town or gone out of business. Philadelphia became a different, less inviting place.” Binzen’s entire description of the city is compelling. (p. 9)
• “…the Bulletin’s policy was to cover every aspect of life in the Philadelphia region. It covered every nickel holdup, every grassfire, every meeting of the city’s zoning board and its park commission. It covered the courts very closely as well as the Register of Wills.” (p. 10)
• In 1964, McLean family bought the News-Press in Santa Barbara, Calif. for a westward expansion (p. 11)
• A 1964 expose series on police corruption, directed by city editor Earl Selby, won the Bulletin and Philadelphia its first Pulitzer. (p. 11)
• Inquirer was changing; new editor Gene Roberts earned the paper its first Pulitzer in 1975, starting a streak of 17 before 1990, though they occasionally overreached being sued for libel often, including a $30 million award, the largest libel award in the history of American journalism eventually settled out of court in 1996. (p. 13) As an aside, two years later, the Inquirer was sued by its own reporter Ralph Cipriano in a wild story.
• Great story about sending a copy boy to New York to send a letter back to Philadelphia (also, apparently the Bulletin Almanac existed) (p. 15)
• “Bruno Richard Hauptmann has kept, at long last, his rendezvous with death.” This begins a beautiful Bulletin story from reporter Harry Proctor on the Linbergh baby’s killer’s execution. (p. 21)
• FDR nominated for second term in Philadelphia and gave speech at the University of Pennsylvania, where newspaper extras were sold. (p. 22)
• Bulletin reporters submitted letters to encourage real reader submission, including mentioning fertilizing gardens with dead cats (p. 24)
• Coverage of a Charles Bailey heart surgery under a compromise that if it didn’t go well, it wouldn’t be reported on. Is that an ethical concern? (p. 28)
• In 1953, the Bulletin refused to publish a reporter’s account of the Kinsey sexual story. (p. 30)
• Thorazine story: ethics questions and innovation on Philly (p. 31)
• Chick Coop, surgeon general who recommended cigarette warnings was University of Pennsylvania doctor (p. 34)
• Summer of 1954, progressive Mayor Joe Clark fluoridated the city’s water (p. 34)
• Features editor Paul Cranston was among  (p. 38)
• Lucille Ball offered to buy the Bulletin film critic a TV, as she refused to take on the technology, though the reporter refused. (p. 40)
• In late 1940s, the paper had 750,000 in circulation across 7 editions between 64-96 pages, including a process that could see a 9:20 a.m. story on the newsstand by 10 a.m. (p. 47)
• Homing pigeons were used to take photo negatives from sporting or other distant, ongoing live events to the newsroom. (p. 48)
• In a sign of the future of reader interaction, the Bulletin editors tried to drum up more reader letters. (p. 49)
• Reporters making sure to go out into the field with plenty of dimes to call the newsroom from a pay phone. (p. 56)
• Newsroom rewritemen who took phone calls from in-the-field reporters and turned in beautiful copy but never got bylines were unsung heroes, including Fred McCord, who once wrote that “the soles of Depression-era job seekers were worn so thin they could feel the difference underfoot between a nickel and a dime.” (p. 57)
• “Let the story sing and put the facts in the sidebar.” (p. 58)
• To get through to the Governor about a controversial execution, Paul Cranston landed in a balloon in his front yard. (p. 68)
• Dennis the Menace comic strip was first bought by the Bulletin and Cranston (p. 69)
• Sending a reporter to the Assembly, a fancy Main Line dance referenced earlier (p. 70)
• Like in Harrisburg and other newsroom, PR agents would bring liquor around Christmas to the reporters and ‘the Divvy’ would divide the liquor among the most senior reporters. (p. 76)
• A source threatened suicide if a story ran, the editor said ‘if he jumps, we’ll have  second day story’ (p. 82)
• In 1947, the Philadelphia Record closes because of strike by its union and the paper is bought by the Bulletin (p. 83)
• A reporter hid in a closet to a railroad scoop (p. 83)
• Transit authority gave a fifth of whiskey to all transit reporters in good graces (p. 84)
• The Bulletin was so locally focused, that a newsroom joke was that when World War III started, the lead of its story would be the impact on Kensington. (p. 85)
• The Bulletin was so notoriously fearful of taking a strong stand editorially, that when it endorsed Joe Clark for mayor, he was quoted as saying ‘How could you tell?’ (p. 87)
• Editorial page writer Don Rose, author of eight books, was the father of 12 and, at his death in 1964, 74 grandchildren. (p. 87)
• The Bulletin’s first female Philly editorial writer came in 1969 (p. 91)
• Overall from editorial to news to cartoons to advertising, it was a restrained paper timid and losing ground to a resurgent Inquirer
• April 12 1847 Bulletin first launches by Alexander Cummings, known as the Cummings Evening Telegraphic Bulletin (p. 93)
• The Bulletin was last in circulation of 13 dailies in Philly with 7,000 daily papers, when bought by Robert McLean in 1895. 10 years later it was number one. McLean family owned paper until 1980 (p. 94)
• Bulletin headquarters were at Juniper and Filbert from 1908 to 1955, when the Bulletin moved to the building across from 30th St, Then the Bulletin had 2,500 employees and 720,000 circulation.
• In 1951, at a party at the Pen and Pencil Club celebrating a reporter leaving, she was given a clock with the engraving ‘Her copy is always on time.’ (p. 94)
• Bulletin reporter George Staab went to Horatio Hackett School at York and Frankford near where I live, though he never graduated high school (p. 94)
• More stories of the city editor submitting letters to the editor (p. 98)
• The Virgin Mary’s figure is spotted in West Fairmount Park and tens of thousands come to see her (p. 101)
• In 1963, Nicaragua President Samoza knew the Bulletin and its slogan (p. 107)
• One reporter was covering a fatal stabbing. Said editor Toughill: “Is it black? Then fuck it.” Black crime was ordinary. (p. 112)
• That same editor used a secret phone in a courtroom to call in the results of a a controversial crime to beat everyone else. (p. 112)
• Philadelphia Record owned the New York Post. (p. 112)
• Controversial law-and-order mayor and police commissioner Frank Rizzo, before that, the primary police informant on the 1964 cop corruption series that gave the Bulletin and Philadelphia its first Pulitzer
• Though black communities were often ignored in the 1940s and 1950s, that started to change in the 1960s, including a big feature on the black community (p. 117)
• In covering the Civil Rights movement in the South, a Bulletin and Washington Post reporter sat together in first class, but the New York Times reporter sheepishly admitted his paper would only pay for coach (p. 122)
• The Penn Central Railroad bankruptcy was the country’s largest (p. 123)
• “Part of the tension [in news writing] comes from the irrational fear that maybe you won’t be able to bring it off this time.” (p. 130)
• How Martin Luther King Jr. changed in the course of a few years as one Bulletin reporter covered him (p. 131)
• In representing the distrust and disdain Bulletin reporters had for the Inquirer, one reporter tells the story of sitting next an Inquirer reporter at an event and afterward the Inquirer reporter saying ‘let’s get together and we can go over your notes.” (p. 132)
• One reporter’s story of surviving Nazi-held Vienna (p. 138)
• “Bad idea, kid. You’re thinking big. This is Philadelphia — think small.” an editor tells a reporter (p. 140)
• “If it ain’t local, forget it” (p. 143)
• An old-timer on leave came in to keep the Newspaper Guild out of the Bulletin 1975 (p. 143)
• “To some, all this is no big deal. For me, it was close to everything. A dream made real by a rumpled press card.” said Hans Knight (p. 145)
• One editor told a woman applicant that the Bulletin didn’t need a female reporter because ‘we already have one.’ She made it in and eventually covered Israel Prime Minister Golda Meir (p. 148)
• “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” said New Yorker writer AJ Liebling (p. 150)
• If bulletin didn’t have a story, it didn’t happen p150, claim staff bigger than inqy and daily news together
• Orrin Evans was the first and only black Bulletin reporter when Claude Lewis came in 1967 (p. 153)
• Evans was moved that Lewis was offered the Harrisburg bureau, something Evans could have never gotten when he had started because of racial prejudices (p. 155)
• Story of Lewis taking advantage of an off-the-record conversation with a prosecutor (p. 157)
• One reason black reporter hires went up in the 1960s was that leading black celebrities would only be interviewed by black reporters, so many younger, less experienced blacks were hired over whites, which caused resentment. (p. 157)
• Lewis was beaten by police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention (p. 158)
• Lewis became the first black columnist (p. 159)
• Reporters fought Editor George Packard, who was making many changes to the Bulletin, eventually, he became too divisive and was asked to leave, another way that Gene Roberts and the Inquirer continued to innovate and win the battle (p. 161)
• The 20th annual Association of Black Journalists conference was held triumphantly back in Philadelphia (p. 163)

This Philadelphia daily newspaper family tree is framed in the Inquirer editorial board room at 400 N. Broad Street. Photo by Russell Cooke. Click to enlarge.

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 a historical timeline of daily newspapers in Philadelphia, or at least what I could decode using four sources: primarily the Pennsylvania State Library newspaper collection [call number: Philadelphia] and the archives of the University of Virginia, with some help from a 1997 collection of essays called ‘Nearly Everybody Read It,’ edited by Peter Binzen (whose other book I recently read) and an essay from Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia member Gerry Wilkinson. (I compiled some other notes on the Inquirer here.)

Check it out below and offer any criticism or comment — I’m certainly expecting that this is incomplete, so any other leads are appreciated!

This goes from most recent to least recent, and if anyone can follow all the openings, rebrandings and mergers enough to get an accurate count of daily newspapers at a variety of times, I’d love to hear it.

• October 2010: Philadelphia Media Network announces plans to leave the Inquirer Building for the former Strawbridge Building at Eighth and Market streets.
• February 2009: Philadelphia Daily News is made ‘an edition’ of the Philadelphia Inquirer, then owned by Philadelphia Media Holdings, which went through bankruptcy and was eventually bought by a group called Philadelphia Media Network.
• November 1995: Philly.com is launched
• Jan. 1982: Philadelphia Evening Bulletin closes
• Late 1977:  Quebecor-owned Philadelphia Journal launches, focusing on sports coverage and a tabloid format, but was squeezed out, closing in 1981.
• December 31, 1969: Inquirer and Daily News bought by the Knight paper chain, merged with Ridder in 1974
• 1957: Walter Annenberg purchases the Daily News, becoming the Inquirer’s sister paper
• Feb. 1, 1947 Philadelphia Record, owned by J. David Stern and facing a ‘crippling strike,’ bought by Evening Bulletin for $13 million, adding a Sunday edition and picking up radio station WCAU, which had recently launched a TV station.
• July 31, 1936: Moses Anenberg (Walter’s father) purchases the Inquirer
• April 16, 1934: Inquirer absorbs the Public Ledger, adds a Sunday edition
• March 31, 1925: Philadelphia Daily News launches
• 1925: Inquirer moves to its longtime location at Broad and Callowhill streets, costing $10 million.
• 1920: The Philadelphia Press is bought by the famed Curtis Publishing Company, which renamed the formerly Ben Franklin-owned Pennsylvania Gazette to the Saturday Evening Post.
• 1918: Evening Public Ledger absorbs the Evening Telegraph.
• 1902: Public Ledger absorbs the Philadelphia Times.
• 1900: Public Ledger absorbs Taggarts’ Sunday Times.
•  1885: Public Ledger absorbs Philadelphia Press.
• 1884: Philadelphia Tribune begins printing.
•  June 25, 1882: Philadelphia Record begins publishing daily.
•  1876: The Philadelphia Public Ledger absorbs the North American, briefly publishing as “The Public Ledger and North American.”
• 1875: Times begins publishing daily, continuing Illustrated and continued in 1902 by the Philadelphia Times.
• 1866: Evening Star begins publishing daily, halting in 1900. (not sure if merged).
•  1864: Evening Telegraph begins publishing daily.
• 1863: Daily Age begins publishing daily.
• 1862: Daily Constitution Union begins publishing daily, becoming the Evening Union in 1867.
• April 1860: Inquirer rebranded as the Philadelphia Inquirer.
• 1857: The Press begins publishing, continued as the Philadelphia Press in 1880.
• 1850: the North American absorbs the American Daily Advertiser, the frequently renamed ancestor of the Pennsylvania Packet.
• 1847: American Sentinel rebranded as the Evening Telegraphic Bulletin.***
• 1847: Spirit of The Times and Daily Keystone begins publishing daily, continued as the Spirit of The Times in 1849.
• February 15, 1845: “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe first published in the Inquirer

• 1845: The Inquirer is called “The Pennsylvania Inquirer and National Gazette.”
•  1845: North American absorbs the United States Gazette, rebranding as the North American and United States Gazette.
•  1844: The American Advocate begins publlishing daily except Sunday, until 1845.
• 1840: Charles Dickens novels run serialized in the Inquirer
• 1839: Inquirer merges with the Daily Courier, briefly known as “The Pennsylvania Inquirer and Daily Courier.”
• 1839: North American absorbs American Daily Advertiser to form the North American and Daily Advertiser.
• March 25, 1836: Philadelphia Public Ledger begins printing, soon after absorbing the Philadelphia Transcript.
• 1835: The Daily Transcript begins printing.
• 1832: Pennsylvanian begins publishing daily except Sunday, continued as the Daily Pennsylvanian in 1855.
  
• 1829: the North American begins publishing.
• Monday, June 1, 1829 — Pennsylvania Inquirer launches**
• 1828: The Daily Chronicle begins publishing daily, except Sunday, continued as the Daily Courier in 1834.
• 1824: Franklin Gazette absorbs the Aurora General Advertiser.
• 1823: United States Gazette continues merged Union, United States Gazette and True American.
•  1820: National Gazette and Literary Register begins publishing daily except for Sunday, followed in 1841 by the National Gazette and Literary and Commercial Register.
• 1820: American Sentinel and Mercantile Advertiser begins publishing daily except Sunday, which launched as a weekly in 1815 and was shortened to the American Sentinel in 1824.***
• 1817: United States Gazette merges with True American to form Union, United States Gazette and True American.
  1812: Star of Liberty begins publishing daily except Sunday, though it doesn’t survive the year.
• 1807: Democratic Press begins publishing daily.
• 1804: Political and Commercial Register begins publishing daily, ending in 1820.
• 1802: Independent Whig, and Philadelphia Commercial Gazette begin publishing daily, though it folds soon after.
• 1801: Gazette of the United States is the rebranded version of the earlier Gazette properties.
• 1800: Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser is rebranded daily of Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser.

• 1799: Constitutional Diary and Philadelphia Evening Advertiser begins publishing daily, only to fold a year later.
• 1798: True American, and Commercial Advertiser begin publishing daily, continued by the True American in 1815.
• April 24, 1797: Porcupine’s Gazette begins publishing daily following a weekly version, ending in 1800.
• 1796: Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser begins publishing.
•  1796: New World begins publishing daily, continued as the Universal Gazette in November 1797.
• 1794: Philadelphia Gazette and Universal Daily Advertiser begin publishing daily.
• 1794: Aurora General Advertiser begins publishing daily except for Sunday, following the weekly General Advertiser.
•  April 5, 1790: Gazette partnership rebranded as the Federal Gazette and Philadelphia Daily Advertiser.
• 1788: Federal Gazette and Philadelphia Evening Post begin publishing daily except for Sunday.
• Oct. 7, 1786: Independent Gazetteer begins publishing daily, rebranded as the Independent Gazetteer on Jan. 9, 1790.
• Tuesday, September 21, 1784: The Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser begins publishing daily, the first paper to do so in the country, after first being launched as The Pennsylvania Packet on Oct. 28, 1771 by John Dunlap, who printed the Declaration and the Constitution.

Creede, Colo. in 1880

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 American West,’ collected by William Francis Deverell [p. 513]:

Integral to the hinterland and ‘instant city’ models of nineteenth-century western urban history has been the figure of the urban booster. Cities in the west have been promoted, hawked and downright lied about on a scale rarely matched elsewhere in the nation. Boosters in cities on the make — Chicago in the mid-nineteenth century, San Francisco in the 1860s, Denver in the 1880s, Seattle in the 1900s, Los Angeles and Oakland in the 1920s — spared little effort in luring the investment capital, industry and residents necessary to ensure sustained economic development. Western boosters and their allies engaged in what one historian calls ‘urban imperialism,’ an endless quest for control of the markets and economic bonanzas that guaranteed real estate profits. Booster scholarship has tended to focus on the art of promotion and to see cities as products less of social construction than of capitalist fantasies. But behind boosters is the most interesting feature of western cities: urban growth as an end in itself, an economic logic fundamental to capitalism, was elevated by western boosters to the level of civic religion. In some cities, for instance, space was rarely scare but capital was. In places like Los Angeles and later Dallas and Phoenix, this led boosters to cultivate real estate markets and encourage an urban morphology that spread development horizontally across vast distances. In other cities, an opposite geography was at work, and a great deal of scare capital went into creating very expensive space. In Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, immense amounts of capital were devoted to filling tidelands and wetlands that allowed the cities to grow…

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 powerful.

I found myself wildly following up for greater detail on a handful of historical happenings that weren’t connected enough to my understanding of how we came to be.

• How von Stueben helped Washington develop a serious Revolutionary army
• The loss of so many powerful animals, like the Grizzly and bison
• The incredible shaping of our land, like making farmland out of a forested Indiana
• How whale oil was largely used before the modern discovery and understanding of crude oil, and how it’s still used today on the Hubble telescope
• How the Civil War’s collision of new technology (the mini ball bullet) and old combat techniques (line up a fire, and poor hygiene) resulted in unheard of death, to the tune of 620,000 on both sides
• Why the Rocky Mountain locust and the Dust Bowl were incredible, sudden and destructive forces in the American Midwest

I will say that, being an obsessive or not, I was a little disappointed by how little Philadelphia was referenced. Despite its role as major manufacturing hub and, of course, foundational historical setting, just one mention of Philadelphia came up in the 12 hour-long episodes. Of course, New York City, where the History Channel is based, was the perspective through which all urban stories were told. Ugh.

Here it is, the lone mention of Philadelphia, a passing call to its place of the writing of the Declaration of Independence.

“Being a reporter is only lately a respectable occupation.”

Former New York Times reporter Gay Talese telling a story about drinking in his old newspaper days

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 in the next 10 years, we’ll find more and more news and information via social networks, with declines in TV, general Web sites and blogs.

After a few hundred years of newsletters, pamphlets and other written news sources known of in Europe and perhaps present elsewhere, the idea of a regularly published, verifiable collection of news source was developed in the United States in Boston, New York and Philadelphia in the mid-18th century. Leading to that turn of the century, more than 50 newspapers of varying stripe were bubbling in the colonies, leading to the idea of “freedom of the press” when the 1791 Bill of Rights were ratified.

This graphic and its explanation — well worth your time — gets the history down, if briefly, but I can’t say I agree with all its prognosticating about the future of news gathering.

In the 1830s, technologies brought newspapers to mainstream culture; the “penny press” let the printed word reach the masses in a new way, making news cheap enough to move from wealthy elites only to others, shown as the printed word first becomes a noticeable portion of the graphic at above.

The 1880 census cataloged more than 11,000 newspapers in the country, noted by the consolidation of chains and growth of the famed yellow journalism.

Newspaper growth in the 1900s was, as Baekdal says, was a “real revolution of information,” and their subjective graph says so, suggesting that no other news source so quickly or so thoroughly and for so long impacted society and the spread of news. Newspapers of all kind, like the Philadelphia Inquirer about which I have written before, changed the way people saw the world.

Commercial radio was first deployed in the second decade of the 20th century and grew, though, according to the above graphic, not nearly as quickly or as powerfully as newspapers did. By the end of World War II, TV news was just beginning to reach households and offer a very real triumvirate of news coverage, though much coverage was dictated by the powerful newspaper industry.

In the 1970s, though radio was being pushed around by TV, the pair offered a real threat to newspapers for the first time in their century of market control. Baekdal puts 1998 as the year in which the Internet reached a critical mass, in which, whether you had regular access to it or not, you certainly recognized it had a hand in the future of news gathering and dissemination.

Newspapers were well aware of this, though perhaps not as active in trying to affect that change. Some have said newspapers just guessed wrong, after all, that industry tried to invent the Web. But their mistakes have just been compounded as information changes matured even more rapidly in recent years.

The Internet has become home to a handful of different news sources — Web sites, blogs, social networks, social news and other choices. Some of the graphic’s assumptions about the future are as likely as we can guess them to be, but I’m surprised not to see any mention of direct-sourced news.

Universities, corporations, PR firms and any smart company or organization in the country are developing their own Web-based news arm. One way Twitter executives suggest they may make money is by charging for corporate accounts. It’s a chance at getting their news out in an unfiltered way — dangerous, sure, but certainly valuable.

The graphic, I think, accurately suggests the growth of social news and decline of influential Web sites and the fashion of blogs — whatever a blog means today, I’m not quite sure — I think more attention should be paid to direct-sourced news.

It makes mention of “Targeted,” which the source describes as chosen collections — like a la carte TV — but that seems a bit different than an information source.

So what do you think?

H/T to BJK for the story.

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?

Understand that there is a lineage.

Once every American city had a good metro columnist or three, Philadelphia, too. That stopped at least a decade ago. Philadelphia’s last great teller of our stories was Tom Ferrick of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the region’s paper of record and producer of most of the city’s great columnists. He retired for good last year – while he writes now for WHYY online, something’s lost, no?

If anyone has given more to Philadelphia – the city of self-abhorrence – then I don’t know him. Ferrick is Philly born, Temple educated and who, for now, is the last in this long line of Philadelphia columnist-legends. He was a sensible heir, but who is his?

The last legend before Ferrick was Steve Lopez, author and authority challenger, whose columns were famously and excellently anthologized, just one of his two published works that are among the most influential Philly-based books.

It stings like Hell that Lopez didn’t retire or disappear into a Fairmount-Park night. No, he moved to another city. A bigger city. He’s now a columnist at the Los Angeles Times, and we can’t help but think his stories aren’t quite the same without Philadelphia as the backdrop.

Perhaps Lopez’s only challenger to the city’s columnist mantle is Pete Dexter. But, Dexter has put books and left his Philadelphia reputation to smolder.

The others are ghosts of the past for those who know. Larry Fields branded this town’s gossip scene, a role that I do think Dan Gross does well and Michael Klein popularizes still.

Names like Larry McMullen, Chuck Stone, Jimmy French and Rich Aregood. I only know them from the stories others tell me. Whether it’s just nostalgia or if they are more examples of what newspapers are losing I don’t know. (Why aren’t newspapers monetizing this part of their history? Columnists of the past online?)

In sports, the Inquirer’s run with Stephen A. Smith was supposed to be a brand that went global. It didn’t work. David Aldrige is a respected national voice but Philadelphia never seemed to be much more than a paycheck, no? Bill Conlin and Phil Sheridan are writers of note but don’t seem to transcend sport.

Last April, I went to a Q&A session with Lopez who was back in Philly promoting a new book at the Free Library. Someone asked Lopez a question. “Is the Philadelphia columnist dead?” Lopez noted Ferrick as a recent example, but also pointed to current Inqy columnist Dan Rubin. The questioner dismissed him, perhaps unfairly.

Last month I read a heavy-hitting piece by Rubin:

His death made Page B8 on a Sunday. Apparently, I’d talked to police, gone out to the neighborhood, found someone at the hospital. A woman who knew the family told me she feared for her own children, given what was happening on her street.

“The young ones,” she had said, “they are taking over, pretty much.”

In 2008, we can take the qualifier out of that statement.

Clearly he is the best in town today. Trudy Rubin (no relation to Dan so far as I know), who answered questions earlier this month,  is the last semblance of an international presence with her Inquirer Worldview column, John Baer writes with power from the Harrisburg bureau of the Daily News (some of which raise my ire) and former Inquirer Editorial board Editor Chris Satullo is at WHYY, but they don’t quite fit the throne of major urban daily columnist.

Since 1972 Stu Bykofsky has been at the Daily News, one of the country’s last big urban tabloids experienced in trouble. He hosts annual events and has a real following, but I don’t know if he wields power and bends words like the others.

Despite its history as the oldest black newspaper in the country, the Philadelphia Tribune doesn’t seem to regularly break into the broadest conversations, so how can someone like Linn Washington get national recognition?

What’s more, it’s so much more than print. Does the next wave of metro columnists have to be on video and audio, on Facebook and Myspace? The Inquirer brought back Mark Bowden (famed for Blackhawk Down), but in today’s multimedia-age, he seems one-dimensional. There are Daily News-columnist groupies who do like blogger Will Bunch, perhaps part of the future. Rubin is on Twitter, presumably finding new ways to tell stories.

If he doesn’t, who will?

Photo from UConn.

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 own hometown paper.

But why isn’t the Inquirer already cashing in on its historical brand? It seems it may be moving that way, but I want to see more and as a means to develop, sustain its brand and monetize it.

This according to Philadelphia Press Association member Gerry Wilkinson:

The Philadelphia Inquirer was founded on Monday, June 1, 1829. It was then called the Pennsylvania Inquirer and is now the third oldest surviving daily newspaper in the United States in its own right. However, through various mergers, the Inquirer can claim, and rightly so, that it is the oldest daily newspaper in America.

The Inquirer first gained worldwide prominence during the Civil War, wrote Wilkinson:

During the War Between the States, The Philadelphia Inquirer was circulated among the union troops all along the field & fighting front lines. The newspaper has been reported to have provided one of the most objective news coverage of the conflict. It was definitely pro-union but was read by Confederate officers to find out where the northern troops were located.

From About.com:

Mirroring a trend seen across the globe with the ever increasing popularity of the Internet, the Inquirer’s daily circulation of 344,509 has slipped in recent years. It does not currently rank in the top fifteen of all daily newspapers published in the United States.

The Inquirer’s Sunday edition, however, has maintained its popularity with a circulation of 762,194, ranking fifth among all U.S. papers.

It is estimated that in the average week over two million readers are served in the various print and online editions of the paper.

Read more of its highlights, as compiled by About.com here.

All I wonder is why isn’t the Inquirer controlling this history? Online, in print and books, sell this history, as should all other newspapers. Your brand is your product because anyone can write news today, as I suggested earlier. So put this history on its Web site. Promote its lead reporters and correspondents. Sell headlines, photos, front-pages as posters and more. Don’t let About.com and ChristopherWink.com beat you.

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 historic nod to past presidents, like Abraham Lincoln, and fittingly landed on the 303rd anniversary of the birth of Philly’s favorite founding father: Ben Franklin.

Celebrate that below.

Ever wanted to hear about Franklin discovering electricity hilariously and drunkenly recounted, with Jack Black subtly playing the role of Franklin? Wish granted.

If you want a more traditional taste of Franklin, check this video.

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 neglect by learning why Geronimo is such an important historical and revolutionary – albeit ultimately unsuccessful – figure? Of course you do.

Oh, I’m sorry, did you say quote Wikipedia at length? Alright:

[Captain Henry ] Lawton’s official report dated September 9, 1886 sums up the actions of his unit and gives credit to a number of his troopers for their efforts. Geronimo gave credit to Lawton’s tenacity for wearing the Apaches down with constant pursuit. Geronimo and his followers had little or no time to rest or stay in one place. Completely worn out, the little band of Apaches returned to the U.S. with Lawton and officially surrendered to General Miles on September 4, 1886 at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona. …The debate over who Geronimo surrendered to goes on… [Source]

For many American Indian traditions, certainly the Chiricahua Apache among them, Geronimo is one of a handful of traditional leaders who fought the wave of U.S. expansion for as long as they could. For it, he was then held as a U.S. prisoner until his death in February 1909.

Oh and then after this embarassment, in 1918, Prescott Bush – the grandfather of current President George W. Bush – and others allegedly robbed his grave. No, seriously, it was part of some weird ritual for the famed, secretive Skull & Bones club at Yale University.

Our repayment by screaming his name when we jump into pools is related to the movie of the same name, according to Yahoo Answers – which is, yes, about as reliable as Wikipedia. It comes down to U.S. army personnel again.

In 1940, the United States’ first Parachute Test Platoon was formed. It consisted of 50 volunteers who trained in the sweltering heat of Georgia’s Fort Benning. The days were mighty hot, so the paratroopers wanted to stay cool in the evening. One night, Private Eberhardt and three friends watched the movie Geronimo at a local (air conditioned) theater.

After the film, the group discussed the jump they were to make the following morning. According to Howard, one paratrooper asked Eberhardt if he believed he could jump “without fear.” Eberhardt, eager to prove his toughness, said he’d show everyone he wasn’t afraid by yelling “Geronimo!” as he jumped. Eberhardt believed that if he had the presence of mind to remember the word, it would prove he wasn’t scared. [Source]