Covering the story of Philly’s daily newspapers up for sale, again
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Hour 1
It’s been just about 18 months since the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News were sold to a group of hedge funds known as Philadelphia Media Network, and by all accounts, the newspapers are back on the auction block. Recently, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and a group of five other investors publicly expressed their interest in buying the company, as did Philadelphia developer Bart Blatstein and New York financier Raymond Perelman. Things got more interesting last week when Blatstein and Perelman complained that they had been shut out of the bidding process. Reporters and writers at the newspapers say that management has stifled fair and accurate reporting of the potential sale, citing as an example a blog post that was pulled from the philly.com website. What does all this say about the state of the newspaper industry and the challenges journalists face in covering stories about their employers? We’re joined by WHYY’s DAVE DAVIES, who has been writing about these events on his blog Dave Davies Off Mic at Newsworks.org, and RICK EDMONDS, media business analyst for The Poynter Institute and author of Biz Blog at Poynter.org.
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[audio: 021412_100630.mp3]
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