Staff Blog
Eleven Minutes (R)
The Daily Inquirer
posted by Joel Tannenbaum
The Daily Inquirer
Like most secondary media markets in the United States, Philadelphia began the 21st century with two major daily newspapers: a broadsheet and a tabloid. The broadsheet, the Philadelphia Inquirer, covered international, national and local news with a mixture of wire and staff writers, and maintained bureaus in several important locations around the world. The tabloid, the Philadelphia Daily News, focused more on local news, particularly sports. Its articles were shorter and, in the best tabloid tradition, its copy desk given a much longer leash with regards to headline-writing. Their 2008 feature on the extramarital affair and possible illegitimate child of one-time presidential candidate John Edwards — titled “BABY MAMA DRAMA” — was one remarkable example. Their 2017 treatment of Geno’s Steaks owner Joey Vento’s shooting at the hands of fellow anti-immigration activists who took exception to Vento’s Italian origins — “VENTO-LATED!” — was another.
The highbrow-lowbrow rivalry between the two papers was half-hearted — they had been under the same ownership since the 1950s, first by Walter Annenberg, then by Knight Newspapers (subsequently Knight Ridder), and then by Philadelphia Media Holdings, the joint venture of local advertising and real estate moguls and, it was later revealed, the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia.
In 2025, when U.S. Secret Service agents stormed the Inquirer’s printing facilities in Conshohocken and discovered rooms full of counterfeited U.S. banknotes, the full extent of cooperation between PMH and Banco Delta Asia’s largest client, the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, was revealed. In the ensuing firings, arrests and trials, both newspapers were purchased for a fraction of the asking price by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, the holding company at the center of Murdoch’s global media empire.
Murdoch had already made his first foray into Philadelphia media when his Fox Broadcasting Company purchased local television station WTAF, eventually renamed Fox 29. His second took place in 2019 with News Corp’s purchase of the Philadelphia Weekly. Initially assessed as “appropriate for full asset liquidation,” the Weekly’s existence was permitted to continue as the Gladwyne Weekly, an arrangement that allowed long-time editor-in-chief Tim Whittaker to work from home. The paper shifted its editorial focus accordingly, devoting entire issues to popular Main Line events such as the Devon Horse Show and the Agnes Irwin House Tour. The re-branded weekly’s inaugural cover story was “101 Things to Do in Ardmore Before You Die.” Whitaker was permitted to keep his “Editor’s Note” column as a platform to discuss topics in which he was deeply invested and held great expertise, such as the state of hip-hop culture and the difficulties of inner-city life.
The fate of the Weekly weighed heavily on the minds of both Inquirer and Daily News staff as they braced themselves for the News Corp transition.
Murdoch’s first and only teleconference with what was left of PMH’s upper management was characteristically brusque. Murdoch, now 94 and kept alive mostly with organs transplanted from the bodies of redundant copy editors from News Corp-owned papers, was incredulous as to why Philadelphia needed two separate daily newspapers. “You bloody drongos,” Murdoch told his new employees, “I want these papers merged by the end of the week.” And so was born The Daily Inquirer.
The working strategy was to retain the News’ tabloid format and the Inquirer’s more muted editorial style and international focus, although the latter tended now to concentrate upon popular Australian sports such as cricket, beach cricket and dwarf-tossing. Murdoch was not content with the merger — his employees were under constant pressure to eliminate content. As Murdoch approached his hundredth birthday, his directives became increasingly eccentric. First City Council coverage was cut. Then movie listings. Then international news. Then op-ed. By the time of the Murdoch centennial celebrations, all that was left of America’s oldest continuous daily newspaper was a 3-by-5 index card with a single word printed on it. Frequently the word was simply a day of the week. Sometimes it was a color, or a number. Sometimes, to emphasize News Corp’s commitment to the local communities it serviced, the word was particularly Philadelphian, like “YO” or “WATER ICE.”
None of this seemed to matter a great deal at first. After all, as Philadelphia’s handful of celebrity bloggers had been saying incessantly (and, it has been argued, exclusively) for decades, print media was dead. But beginning with the Great Digital Blackouts of 2036-37, which effectively blocked 90 percent of all electronic communication on the Eastern Seaboard, print media turned out not to be so dead after all.
The Daily Inquirer became a particularly important means of conveying information. This was unfortunate because, as described above, the paper’s new one-word editorial policy had an extremely stifling effect on public discourse in Philadelphia — not only about civic or political matters, but about any idea or observation that required human language in order to be expressed:
“CHEESESTEAK,” a typical conversation on a Philadelphia sidewalk might begin in the late 2030s. “WEDNESDAY. GREEN?” might come the reply.
“ORAAAAAAANGE,” the man selling incense sticks on the subway platform would chant. “SEVEN. YOUZ. SATURDAY SOOOOOOOOOFT PRETZEL!”
“SCRAPPLE SCRAPPLE FUMO SCRAPPLE DARBY TOWNSHIP,” commanded the bullhorn voice from the police helicopter circling Hunting Park.
It was only News Corps’ dissolution and Murdoch’s exile to the Torres Strait Islands of his native Australia that the Daily Inquirer — and Philadelphian English began to recover. By the mid-2040s, the darkest days in Philadelphia media history were remembered chiefly in song. One popular verse, ethnomusicologists generally agree, captures the spirit of the time period particularly well:
Fish-TOWN Fish-TOWN A-MO-rO-SO
A-MO-rO-SO Mil-TON STREEEEEET
JU-ni-A-Ta SIX Ma-GEN-ta
SIX Ma-GEN-ta
TUUUUES-day
FOUUUUUUUUUUUR!
“Their 2017 treatment of Geno’s Steaks owner Joey Vento’s shooting at the hands of fellow anti-immigration activists who took exception to Vento’s Italian origins — “VENTO-LATED!” — was another.”
Author seems to suffer from hyper-vento-lation in his gleeful fantasy regarding those whose opinions might differ from his or her own.
p0wned!