Dear Greg Osberg,
You and a few hedge funds have purchased the entire Inquirer, Daily News and their electronic relative. You clearly comprehend all the financial pitfalls and possibilities that lie ahead. Before you take the reins in July, I’d like to suggest some improvements for the Inquirer, which nearly everybody reads. I’ll concentrate on content.
In the 1970s and 1980s the Inquirer won 16 Pulitzer prizes for reporting, writing, photography and editorial cartoons. We all want that regime, those writers and those great-old-days back again.
To get there, please consider writing more about news and issues and less about what people say they think they want to read. Dailies do not earn Pulitzers by publishing the results of fantasy sports games.
Please remember that the nameplate of the paper belongs at the top of the page, not below a banner praising or chiding the Phillies. You give sports its own private section every day. Isn’t that enough?
If you want to stop making the Inquirer resemble a throw-away neighborhood weekly, don’t glue ads onto the nameplate.
Please write about matters that matter. Please sideline, or at least underplay, your “sideshow” column – with a headline as tall as City Hall – about “celebs” and “fashionistas” who have appeared on cable TV shows for as long as Andy Warhol said they would.
In covering elections, please maximize the news about issues and candidates, minimizing tidbits about polls.
When your staff has too much work and too little time, please hire professional freelancers, rather than inviting amateur writers to submit favorite vacation stories or trite Father’s Day anecdotes. High-quality writing brings readers, you know.
When you interview people about their perspective on events, please quote intelligent – dare I say informed? – sources. Quote headliners, not sideliners. When airlines delay passengers for hours, for example, please write about schedules, air-traffic controllers or overheated tarmac rather than about hungry tummies. Give us credit: We readers can imagine the discomfort.
Please note the quality of the content on your website, too. A philly.com page yells, “Nev. woman accused of stealing wine while topless.” Do you want us to take it – or your new company – seriously?
Finally, and closest to my heart, please free Merl Reagle’s weekly syndicated crossword puzzle from the bowels of classified advertising. As Reagle recently e-mailed me: “I’ve been saying for years that crosswords seem to be the Rodney Dangerfield of newspaper features, always getting relegated to the nether parts of the paper.
“I know newspapers are in dire straits right now,” he says, “but I’d be willing to bet that better laid-out puzzle pages would help the paper, not hurt it.”
If I had more than $43 in my piggy bank, I would have tried to join your investment consortium. At the moment I offer one woman’s ideas for improving content. Bonuses for investors should follow.
Good luck, and best wishes for all of us.
Susan
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