In journalism conversations, there is a lot of concern about the need for a public square, a place in which a community can learn and share a common set of facts.

It’s something I’ve talked about in research from the Knight Foundation. The concern of filter bubble, in which the personalization of the web allows us to only reach information that confirms our beliefs, rather than challenges it.

Nationally and in some cases statewide, there is a growing patchwork of meaningful journalism practitioners. Though lacking in many ways, there is a wealth of niche and hyperlocal news providers developing in many corners of the country.

But the hole remains in broader metro regions, where broader metro daily newspapers have been hardest hit. They were, largely, the purveyor of these common sets of facts to build broader community.

We aren’t witnessing the end of this powerful form, I believe, we are simply waiting for the transition.

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.

If you cover a big city with rambling and varied regions and neighborhoods, your reporting and writing should reflect that.

Yet, from a culture of journalism that cycled reporters through various markets to urban decay that encouraged too many of them to live outside those big cities they covered, one of the more common complaints I have from established, legacy media is a frightening disconnect from where they report.

There’s surely no better example of that than the wildly popular Right NEast/Wrong NEast column from Northeast Philadelphia hyperlocal news site NEast Philly, which skewers the very common mistakes by TV and newspapers here, when the get the wrong neighborhood name, street name or worse: tiny details that matter very little to reporters who have never been to those places but matter a great deal to those who live there.

But there’s a more subtle example of this that has long frustrated me, particularly here in Philadelphia.

This from an Inquirer story about on-going internal investigations at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia:

“The Rev. Christopher Walsh, pastor of St. Raymond of Penafort in Philadelphia and one of the organizers, declined to discuss the group.”

It’s an entirely straightforward sentence, something that I’m sure the reporter and editors didn’t think twice about. In fact, I wouldn’t think twice about the sentence myself if it was written by a news organization from some place other than Philadelphia.

Philadelphia is 135 square miles with more than 1.5 million people and some 60 neighborhoods inside a half dozen regions. They are distinct and varied. A quote from someone working near Mount Airy in the northwest section of the city (like this parish is) means something different to me than someone in the Fox Chase neighborhood of the Northeast, in the same way that someone from suburban Ardmore sees a distinction from there and, say, Upper Darby, also outside the city.

We use geography for context and, no, “Philadelphia” isn’t providing that when reading a news outlet based in Philadelphia. (Of course this goes for all reporters covering big cities or any larger region.)

I don’t necessarily mean to pick on the Inquirer: you’ll see it regularly in the Philadelphia Business Journal, like here, where a business in Pennsauken, N.J. is mentioned alongside a business in Philadelphia (no matter that the relatively varied suburban Jersey town is still wildly more contextually helpful than saying Philly instead of Center City or Navy Yard-based), or on the local CBS 3 news, using lower thirds for a man from “Philadelphia,” or when 6ABC mentions a man was shot “on a Philadelphia street.”

To use that earlier example, Ardmore is 1.9 square miles and has 12,000 people. If your reporters don’t recognize that “Philadelphia” isn’t a sufficient enough a geographical description in comparison to a town like that for describing a source, a business, an organization or building, then you need to rent a bus and take them on a tour of the city to show how different it can be.

And take 76 or 95 a bit farther north than the 676 interchange.

Mass media is the clearest way we self-identify, which is why I feel so strongly that Philadelphia needs movies and music that embrace our accent and culture more fervently. But in this way too, journalism is a way for us to understand ourselves and our city.

Just a couple examples of this may seem is small and meaningless. But I see it with enough regularity to frustrate me, and thousands of such examples every year contribute to our region seeing a vibrant and varied city in a very monolithic way. And that’s another in a long list of failures by news organizations that have come unhinged from the communities they are meant to cover.

Print is going to last longer than we might think because we can prove print in a way we cannot prove with digital.

Someone recently mentioned to me that in 10 years, we’ll still be predicting the death of newspapers. I think sitting here, in my office, looking at a copy of the Wall Street Journal that I stuffed into my pocket after finding it on a bench at the 2nd Street station in Old City Philadelphia, I believe that to be true.

Let me say something controversial: newspapers mean something more than news sites. Just like printed photographs mean something more than Facebook pictures.

Digital media still should amaze in their flexibility, utility and reach. But their printed counterparts are also still remarkable for all the reasons their future seem limited: they are inflexible, expensive and in-viral.

For more than their serendipity, when I pick up a newspaper, I so often want to hold on to it because it still feels like the best way to preserve our history: how we see, interpret and understand today in this present. Digital media are so powerful because they are so malleable — we can shape words, correct mistakes, add visual supplement so easily. But when it’s printed — that newspaper, that photograph, that view of the world — what we see cannot be as easily changed.

Understand, truth is very rarely in a newspaper or in a photograph, but what is in them — and what is far more difficult to change — is our version of that truth, and that matters something too.

Our understanding of the world and our trust in it is so tied to having our own piece of it — not sharing it with a cloud — that it’s difficult to give that up. Even someone as young as I am — mid-twenties — understands almost preternaturally the mechanics of print in a way I cannot understand digitizing information. Understanding and trust seem so interlocked.

The reality is that the internet may likely give us a place where all information is accessible and distributable, culled and curated in ways absolutely unimaginable in the history of civilization. That reality does, I believe, make us better equipped to understand, and, with a set of ethics, that means we are more able to hold accountable what was said, what was thought, what was shared in the past, in a much cleaner way.

We don’t need a stack of yellowed newspaper clippings anymore in that world. But won’t we still frame photographs for some time now into the future?

Because while there are so many ways to improve on print, we feel so much more in control of that stack of clippings and that framed photo than we do with them in pixels. So while our senses say we should pull the plug on print promptly, it’ll take a decade or two before we overcome the feelings over which we have less control.

I am not going back to freelancing.

Last month, I came on full-time with Technically Media, a company I helped launch and produces Technically Philly.

Still, going back on my own, in some form, has returned me to thinking about and combing through some of the advice I collected in 2009, during my year freelancing.

Too many of those perspectives and resources seemed valuable to not share.

A former Inquirer managing editor gave me this neat take:

“Imagine you have an agent with four hours a day to sell your work. You give that agent a list of people to call and a couple of set scripts or talking points. You also demand that the agent keep an active spreadsheet of calls made, messages left, follow up contacts, networking calls — of editorial management and customer service tasks. A portion of those calls will be cold calls to editors. Ah. The rub: you don’t have an agent. You are the writer and the sales force. Assign yourself those tasks. Devote time to plan and to organize this effort. Do the gritty day-to-day stuff to keep those contacts fresh. Oh yes — and still write 12 hours a day.”

Tips that came across from freelance contacts and banging my head against the wall long enough:

• Have a website, stupid. Have clips and links to others.
• Don’t list rates on your website because that’ll depend a lot on a lot of things. (The friend who first schooled me on this noted that hourly rates lie a lot, as they don’t show the hidden costs to a freelancer. So , say, a $40 rate might leave you with $16,000 for the year.)
• Do put an email address and a phone number.
• Think of having two projects per week, which would be really good, offering two days a week on each project and a day of office and administrative work (like invoicing, organization and outreach). That’s 100 jobs a year and two weeks off, in a dream, but, of course, that gets way more complicated and blurred, particularly when you’re stick a couple years in.
• Having regular work is key — I liked a worse-paying gig because it offered a regular stream of income that allowed for some stability.

Basic business tips –Freelancing was a first introduction to a lot of business basics that have helped me navigate our incorporation and development of Technically Media

• Your Employee Identification Number (EIN) is to your Social Security Number,  as a business is to a human. If you are freelancing full time, you ought to get one, so you can get a bank account and sequester those business assets and expenses from your personal ones.
• Get a business credit card for business expenses, I was instructed to do, though I didn’t follow through. The idea is that it’ll further help you to keep business expenses separate.
• Make business expenses — Travel costs, software, office supplies, office space and the like because, as a freelance photographer friend told me, “it’s much better to invest in your self than to pay more taxes than you have to.”
• Flat rates tend to be the most agreeable, so per-word and hourly rates are good for internal math, a signed, sealed and deliverable flat-rate with expectations make for the best relationships.
• For cold email pitches, you’re lucky to get a 15 percent open rate — That’s not conversion or click, that’s an open rate, and that figure came from a friend who used a paid newsletter service to track click rates.
• Lots of services exist to get you contacts, but the relationships matter most. Still, information like this, sure helps.
• If you’re young, and they know it, people will try to pay you less because of it

Reading that helped:

• Figure out what hourly rate you need — Freelance Switch
• For the Self-Employed, a Year-Round System Will Smooth Tax Time — New York Times
• How to be a freelance journalist — Bad Language
• Recession Writing Tips, Part One — Media Bistro
• Four Steps to a great pitch and sell your writing — Freelance Switch
• Top 10 distraction stoppers — Lifehacker
• Get your brand out there by freelance writing — Personal Branding
• When to work for free — Shifting Careers
• A Freelancer’s Taste Of Anger — Philadelphia Will Do
• Works Made For Hire — Keep Your Copyrights
• Three reasons why freelancers are safer during a recession — Freelance Advisor

Yes, I’ve written plenty about other freelancing advice. Three more notable ones:

• Freelancers: the rules and tricks of deducting your home expenses on your taxes
• Five rules of freelancing I found and didn’t always follow
• When does a freelancer’s workday stop?

Weekly in Print. Daily online, I suggested.

I wrote it on a piece of paper and posted it in my cubicle, as editorial page editor. In the mid-1990s, our newspaper staff rather presciently decided to move from printing three days a week to just once, having already dropped from a daily a few years earlier.

The intent, a front-page story read at the time, was to reduce costs at a time when the Internet would soon be the source of all news. Gosh, they were a bit too early, but dead on. So, they’d update daily online and follow-up with the biggest stories weekly.

A fine concept if it had carried through. However, at some point, the legendary NEWS, as old-head TTNers call it, fell into disrepair in the late 1990s and into the 21st-century. Despite some bright spots and top talent, the paper became a tabloid weekly at best.

By the time I got to Room 243 in October 2004, things were already improving. By my senior year, we were returning to national recognition — having repeated with an Online Pacemaker, awarded by the AP’s Collegiate division. I wondered if a tagline could further change the culture of a newsroom.

So, among a slew of other initiatives, we set about, as a staff, returning our focus to daily online updates, with bigger, more feature-orientated pieces in the weekly product. We started the action, so the pledge seemed to be a logical next step.

“So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this – the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.”

While I write here for free and have given a great deal of sweat equity to startups Technically Philly and NEast Philly without much monetary return yet, I’ve taken a fairly firm stand that I won’t write for free and don’t think other freelancers should, which happens to be my biggest beef with the Huffington Post.

But Shirky’s assessment (which came in 2004, I should add) and other conversation about the cost of writing brings up a topic that continues to weigh on my mind.

Already on wringing my hand over the matter, I saw a craigslist posting that, after a laugh, seemed to further my acceptance that we’ll continue to see pay fall for writers, reporters and the like.

what is it with these supposed gigs which either pay close to nothing $6 an ARTICLE ??! !! or wait – $1 a rewrite !!!
why are writers so undervalued ?? or the ‘no pay’. If its so EASY to WRITE — THEN DO IT YOURSELF !!
I SAY WRITERS – IGNORE THESE IDIOTS . [Source]

I have to say I think I agree with what motivated that poster and that might frighten me.

So many tools have been built to find the cheapest source and the growing crush of unemployed journalists and continued graduation of aspiring journalists, not to mention people outside the industry who would take writing on as a hobby, all make for clear reasons to expect the continued devaluation of paid writers.

I don’t yet agree that all of this will evaporate, but it’s clear, I think, that we’ll continue to see the brush cleared out and only the highest level writers will continue to cobble together any kind of paid existence.

Are you going to be in that number?

The 21st century graduates of The Temple News at the 88th anniversary alumni reception: (Back from left) Andrew Thompson, '09; Chris Reber, '08; ; Alex Irwin, '08; Brandon Lausch, '06; Lucas Murray, '05; Christopher Wink, '08; Mike Korostelev, '09 (Second from back row) Sulaiman Abdur-Rahman, '07; Chris Stover, '09; Morgan Zalot, '11; Dave Isaac, '09; Anthony Stipa, '09; Kevin Brosky '10; Kriston Bethel, '10; Tracy Galloway, '10; Unclear (Third from back row) Brian White, '04; Holly Otterbein, '09; Leigh Zaleski, '08; LeAnne Matlach, '09; Jen Reardon, '10; Sherri Hospedales, '10; Stephen Zook, '10; Chelsea Calhoun, '10; Maria Zankey, '10; Brian Dzenis, '12; Shannon McDonald, '09; Sean Blanda, '08; Rachel Playe, '08; Brian James Kirk, '08 (Front Row) Brianna Barry, '08; Melissa Dipento, '08; Ashley Nguyen, '12; Malaika Carpenter, '08; Charmie Snetter, '07; Nadia Stadnycki,'06

You just aren’t doing everything you can.

It’s the seemingly unintentional, passive-aggressive jab that I sometimes get from older or otherwise more established journalists, writers and editors. Most often and in many ways, I’m sure the sentiment is pristine in its accuracy, often abutted by the never-to-be-defended-against “it takes time,” which, of course is always true.

But I can’t help but think what’s happened since, say, 2007 or even later, is something bigger that is changing the value of a lot of once rock solid professional advice for young and otherwise aspiring journalists, and making it awfully hard out there.

Two weeks ago, The Temple News, a college newspaper with ample history, held its semi-annual reunion. The reception pulled 150 or more proud Newsers from 1949 through to current staffers, fairly impressive for an 88-year-old campus mainstay.

It was a fine event held not far from where Temple University began more than 125 years ago, and, while mostly alumni clustered to those from their decade of graduation, there was co-mingling, which is always refreshing to see.

Before the reception, there were tours, mingling in the current newsroom and an alumni panel, of which I am proud to say I was a part.

Of the ten panel members, five had graduated this decade and the other half all had left the Temple News offices before 1981.

That means there quite literally was a generation a gap, at least 20 years between half the panel and, you know what, while the conversation quickly followed that track, the career advice that came later found a divide along more recent lines.

TALKING AND REMEMBERING

After everyone introduced him or herself, we were asked to share memories of our time with The Temple News. It felt natural  to let the older cohort take hold of the conversation, and it seemed my fellow, younger panel members agreed, none of us saying much if anything more than that first introduction.

It became a sharing of stories from the panel members — and then the older folks from the audience of more than 30. Stories from people who were working in or breaking into the industry during a past generation of the industry.

Most young journalists love the old nostalgic talk of hot press/cold press/teletype and all the other once technologies of newspapering. So we, the younger generation, both on the panel and in the audience, of Temple News alumni, listened to them remembering.

Reunions are about remembering, so no one blinked when Mike Sisak, a copy editor on the New York Times’ sports desk and a 1962 Temple News editor-in-chief, called for anyone from his generation in the room to identify him or herself and talk about his or her experiences.

That, quite frankly, is the divide I expected.

The panel members who could perhaps still pass for someone’s child would mostly listen, while those who might more likely be called a parent or more likely still a grandparent would talk about the past. That’s how it’s meant to be.

CAREER ADVICE

With the last 10 minutes of the nearly 90-minute pre-reception event, current Temple News adviser and 1998 graduate John Di Carlo called for questions from the audience.

One of the last and, to me, the most interesting question, came from former TTN News Editor and 2009 graduate LeAnne Matlach.

The bright, competent and hard-working aspiring broadcast journalist asked, as inevitably is the case at these types of events, asked for advice on grabbing that first job in the industry. Saddled with student loans and several hundred applications deep seven months past her graduation with not much to show for it outside a food service job, Matlach is, it seems, awfully frustrated by her lack of success despite, it seems, making a lot of the right decisions.

I almost cringed. Not because the question was unfair and certainly not because it wasn’t the time to do it — the room was full of the bright and excessively successful in an industry she wanted in on — but rather because I expected advice that wouldn’t help and, maybe, hurt her, in my opinion.

Here’s a quick review of some of the advice as I remember it:

1. A 1959 graduate said try spicing up your applications or clips you send in. To get one of his first jobs, he sent in a cartoon.
2. A 1962 graduate said reach out to alumni.
3. A 1968 graduate said not to ignore Web products and asked, with a laugh from the crowd, if NEast Philly founder and 2009 graduate Shannon McDonald or I were hiring.
4. A ~1970s graduate said to try public relations or other fields before finding a journalism gig.
5. A 1991 graduate said ‘be annoying.’ He “graduated in a tough economy too,” but he got a position by persistently approaching the editor at a publication for which he wanted to work.
6. A 2004 graduate said apply to smaller markets.
7. A 2005 graduate says freelance, freelance, freelance.

Mike Sisak, Phil Jasner, Shannon McDonald and I on the alumni panel.

You see, while the broad conversation was split along traditional generational lines, the conversation about career advice appears here to be affected more by the great big newspaper collapse that didn’t happen in its most popularly-recognized form until after 2006.

I think every since piece of advice above was absolutely viable even five years ago. I think they’ve all become more complicated since the quickened pace of newspaper decline, combined with a historic stall in advertising, the worst recession since before World War II  and a complete rethink of the industry.

Here are my concerns:

1. This might translate today to a solid multimedia presence, something Matlach is trying, though perhaps she could do more. She is building a bit of a presence on Twitter and has her reel on Youtube, seen above, which dominates a Google search of her name. The fact remains that journalism jobs have been cut at a historic rate over the past three years, so entry level jobs are now being absorbed by people with years more experience. The newspaper bubble is popping and no cartoon is gonna overcome that.
2. Reaching out to alumni is always valuable, and I saw Matlach wisely speaking to this alumnus after the reception. But in a room of 50 or more successful journalists at newspapers and news outfits of big and small acclaim, only one could even begin to speak honestly of any freelance opportunities for someone starting out — Barry Levine, the executive editor of the National Enquirer and a 1981 graduate.
3. The growth of Web news is, of course, a real one and likely we’ll see a huge hyperlocal movement in the next few years. I’m also a passionate believer that the most successful of these will be for-profit entities, but this is a surprisingly nascent movement. Without the real help of alumni in No. 2, a recent graduate would have to have a lot of luck to get on board with a profitable online news arm. Knowledge of this is simply way ahead of the actual businesses.
4. See No. 1. With so many unemployed people generally, and particular in the media industry, I think established journalists are underestimating how difficult it is to find that writing-related, but not-quite-journalism job. Still, the point should be taken, but keep these struggles in mind.
5. It’s frustrating for recent graduates to hear the folks from the early 1980s and 1990s talk about the tough economies they graduated into. Please understand that this is a new beast. Not only is unemployment for 20-somethings the highest since records were first taken in the 1940s, but when we’re talking the news industry, there is simply no generation of journalism graduates who have ever faced the entry-level obstacles that today’s graduates do. That 1991 graduate who came out in a “tough economy, too” came out to a newspaper industry that was still growing in some ways — the historic peak for the number of newspapers with at least 250k readers didn’t come until 1993. All that said, persistence sure is virtue, but the jobs, even those internships, simply aren’t there.
6. Sure, entry-level folks need to look outside Philadelphia if they are still going to try to play the newspaper/media climbing game, but, say it with me now, more than 30,000 newspaper jobs have been lost in the past two years. Matlach told the audience that she had applied for positions in Guam, and she’s also applied for gigs in North Dakota. She’s trying.
7. I agree with the sentiment of freelancing and I’m doing it myself, but having spoken after the panel to the alumnae who made this suggestion, I know there is a misunderstanding about how available that is for recent graduates who need money. You’re not supposed to freelance when you’re just starting out, when there’s a recession nor when the news industry is in a period of massive readjustment. They’re all happening now, so it’s harder than ever for young freelancers. I believe that, particularly because while the number of outlets for which to write has jumped, the number of paid opportunities has not.

Reality TV star Danny Bonaduce attended the reception that followed the panel to speak about his aunt Jackie Steck, who was a Temple journalism professor. I'm standing in the back left of this photo in the handsome green argyle sweater.

No one, particularly no one on a fancy alumni panel celebrating a college newspaper with a proud tradition, wants to give a bleak response or offer no real help. So you give the advice you’ve been given. You say things that have worked, but that doesn’t mean they’ll work now.

This is what I would have told Matlach, though she already knows my thoughts here.

1. Ride out this recession. Get whatever job you can now to pay your bills because the recession is lessening, some advertising money will flow again, business models will be rehashed, news orgs and other big companies will feel less of a pinch on their legacy debt, unemployment will reduce in the coming years and the like.
2. While you’re doing that, do three things so as not to waste your time: Do freelance. This is a lot more difficult than I think many established journalists want to believe, but you do have to keep your name out there. It won’t pay your bills like it has for others for reasons: there are more freelancers now because of unemployment; there are smaller budgets for it and you’re young so you’re least important, established and networked. Understand the pros and cons.
3. Do create the strongest multimedia presence you can. I am hardly a Web developer, but I’ve continually focused on trying to develop my ability to own Web news, writing and reporting and, though Matlach is strong in these areas, I know she, like most others out there, can learn plenty more. When this thing turns around, you’d be a fool to not be the strongest out the gate.
4. And, I think most important, start creating your own job. No one is entirely certain how long it will take for employment numbers to return to whatever was once normal. Even when they do, no one is entirely sure what the media landscape will look like. Hell, maybe the world isn’t ending, but this may be a very dramatic pardigm shift in the world of news. Find a niche and start trying to create a job, a business and a life around news and reporting and journalism if that’s really what you want. Learn to write a business plan.

A friend of mine, who is a bright young multimedia journalist by any standard, a fellow 2008 Temple News alumnus and even-keeled in his temperament, recently expressed, perhaps only partially in jest, his concern that he might be unable to stop from shouting down the next established journalist who tried to lay the claim that things were harder when he was starting.

It’s not that not-yet established journalists don’t respect their more accomplished peers. We do. But for every old timers story about how they didn’t have the Internet and other Web-based technologies and tools, it’s difficult to not hear any sympathy for how difficult it is right now.

That’s going to change in coming years. But graduates from, say 2006 or 2007, particularly those in journalism fields, through to the next couple graduating classes have it damn tough, and it’d be nice for some of that to be respected and understood, instead of criticized.

Nobody in business will ever say he isn’t concerned with listening to the customer. Really proving it, of course, is the difference between well-loved companies and those that aren’t.

Even notoriously frustrating Comcast has gained ground with its use of social media — a powerful mechanism for communication that, despite all the attention, we still may have yet to fully grasp. But beyond the buzz, the real value is hearing from customers who experience your products, whatever they may be — from buying tires to reading news.

I had two experiences with the concept recently, one from your friends in old media.

On Friday, I was driving a car that wasn’t my own through Flemington, N.J., though I had been holding on to the keys quite a bit in the past few months and noticed no warning signs of trouble. After filling up the tank at the Quick Check — something of a North Jersey Wawa, 7-11, fill-in your moderately well-liked convenience store that makes hoagies etc. — I turned the key and.. nothing.

I got the chance to offer, as a regular customer, my thoughts but didn’t feel anyone cared — how strange a successful regional corner store chain can’t do what old media did the same week.

When I turned the key in my ignition switch, my accessories came on — like the radio, lights and power window control — but no real clicking noises from the ignition switch. The lack of noise might lead one to be believe it was a problem with the battery — surely the most common cause of care difficulties like this — but the full, unimpaired accessory-action might lead one to believe it was a problem with the starter — perhaps the second most common in older cars like the one I was driving — a 1995 Nissan Maxima with more than 198,000 miles on it.

Of course, men are want to offer something to say when a car hood is up — so their opinons muddled between it being a battery or a starter problem. I pulled out my jumper cables — knowing the battery was the easiest to test — and tried to jump my car using the functioning batteries of two vehicles driven by willing strangers.

No jump, but, also, no real spark from the cables. The concern came from the old heads standing around the gas station offering opinions no one really asked them for that my jumper cables were trash.

What next then?

Well, with the traffic at this Quick Check on the day before July 4, you’d think I’d easily be able to find someone else with cables, time and the willingness to help. Well, you’d be wrong. It wasn’t for lack of trying from me or the gas station attendant — who even went as far as letting my try getting a jump from his car.

With no luck and no cables, the kindly attendant helped me push the car into a vacant spot, when three gentlemen in suits and Quick Check name tags came by asking questions with clip boards in hand. They were in some way related to the management of this franchise at the corner of state Rt. 31 and county Rt. 579 in Hunterdon. They started walking past me toward their car, when I stopped them.

“That attendant has really been helpful and considerate,” I told them. “I through this stretch a lot and will be more likely to stop here because of him.”

I was trying to repay the kid’s attention and kindness. The lead man in the suit felt compelled enough to ask if everything was alright — my leaning on my car in the lot.

I asked them if they had jumper cables.

“We really need to get going,” one of the other three said. “I’m sure someone else will be able to help you.”

They didn’t quite hear me suggest, as they got into their car, that they have a $25 pair of jumper cables at all of their stations. It could be a liability issue, or it could simply be an oversight.

I won’t know and they’ll never hear my suggestion. Strange, because, so far as I see it, there’s nothing more important than hearing a genuine concern from a rationale, paying customer.

It made me smile — on an otherwise frustrating day — to think that just a few days before I had a very different experience with another industry people rag on these days.

From the good people at the Philadelphia Inquirer, I received late last month — likely using the e-mail I have for getting access to write comments on their site — an invitation to be  a part of a Web-based reader panel. It’s surely nothing revolutionary or particularly innovative, but it was so different than my Quick Check experience a few days later that it piqued my interest.

Of course, what knowledy the Inqy will garner or use from the panel is another conversation altogether. But at a time when newspapers are offering less content that increasingly has to be less reported yet are often asking readers to pay more, it sure is  a fine time to figure out what could change the tides — even if it’s likely way too late.

And, of course, Quick Check almost certainly has panels and surveys and questionnaires, like the Inquirer and every other company does — win an iPod if you answer these 10 questions that only three percent of our customers will.

But last Friday was an opportunity for a man a suit and presumably some influence in how the chain is run to hear my thought, but he passed on them. Seems strange. I wonder if there is any mechanism for most newspapers to generally absorb genuine advice from their readers.

I bet there was at sometime. I suppose it’s too much of a scramble for that now.