Identity Crisis   

The Philadelphia Inquirer has been buffeted by a major staff reduction, sagging circulation, the loss of a popular editor and a blurred sense of mission. It also has a proud tradition and, despite painful losses, a talented staff capable of great journalism. What lies ahead?

Still. It's a word that creeps into sentences spoken at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Sentences that would be fine without a "still" but with it carry a bit more defiance or pride or frustration.

"It's still one of the best papers."

"It's a newspaper that still has a fighting chance."

"There are still a ton of great people here."

Still. As in, despite two rounds of buyouts that cost the newsroom nearly 80 people and the business side many more, despite the departure of the paper's top editor, despite a 29 percent decline in daily circulation since 1991--the most recent numbers showing a 9 percent drop in a year--still.

Despite stops and starts in efforts to reach readers, despite references in press coverage to the glory years being long since past, despite an identity crisis about what exactly this paper should be--still.

How did the Philadelphia Inquirer, one of the best papers in the country--yes, still--get to this point of insecurity? Part of the answer is much the way other newspapers have, as the story of the Inquirer in recent years is the story of many. Papers have struggled to stay relevant and vital to readers as their lifestyles change and a multitude of other news sources swarm around them. Circulation for the daily newspaper industry on a whole declined 10.5 percent from 1990 to 2000. Many big-city dailies have faced a push for more "local-local" news, as potential readers in the suburbs swell--meaning papers are trying to do more for fewer people. And often with fewer people, as cost-cutting, particularly in the last year-and-a-half, has forced newsroom exits. All Knight Ridder newspapers, not just the Inquirer, lost staffers last summer when the company cut 10 percent of its employees due to falling revenues. Most other newspaper companies similarly sliced payrolls.

So those big challenges, both quantitative--how do you reverse sliding circulation?--and qualitative--what role should newspapers play? – expand with the pressures of an economic crunch and companies' commitments to the high profit margins to which Wall Street has grown accustomed.

At the Inquirer, throw into the conundrum the fragmented circulation area, which spreads over two states and eight counties, and the formidable competition in those suburbs – 20 daily newspapers ring the city, churning out the local coverage readers want. While the latest circulation numbers for newspapers showed both gains and declines, the Inquirer's 9 percent drop was conspicuous. Plus, there's the traditional view of the paper as a powerhouse, built up from a weak daily to a dominant force under the editorship of Gene Roberts, who left the paper in 1990 but whose mission of great journalism still pervades staffers' conversations. The powerhouse takes a hit when a slew of talented journalists leave.

"I think the Inquirer went through such a magical period," says Stephen Seplow, a 26-year staffer who took a buyout in June. Cutbacks at the paper "are more drastic because the ambitions here were so great.... Those ambitions are being cut off."

There is a fear among many staffers that the mandate to better cover the suburbs could translate into a loss of national, foreign and investigative reporting, hallmarks of the paper that some reluctantly admit have suffered a bit already. It's difficult to lose about 100 people through buyouts and attrition in less than a year and put out a paper with the same breadth.

"I do think the buyouts cost us a terrible price in great, great talent," says Dan Biddle, the Inquirer's investigative reporting editor. "And that did make it harder to do the kind of work that they're paying me to do.... There's no question."

But. Still. "I'm convinced there's a way we can provide an electrifying local report without tearing down or sacrificing any more than we already have the things that we do well," he says.

"I think that's a really painful thing," says reporter Nancy Phillips of the buyouts. "We watched a lot of friends and a lot of very talented colleagues walk out the door.... But there are still plenty of us here who had the privilege of working with Gene who uphold the values that he stood for."

George Anastasia, who joined the paper in 1974 and has made a name for himself covering the mob, likens the buyouts--one in December 2000 and one in June--to a one-two punch. Then came the bad circulation news in October. Then came the sudden departure of popular Editor Robert J. Rosenthal in early November. "People are just numb now," Anastasia says. "People are just waiting."

Quickly, though, staffers--some weary, some sad--brushed off the battlefield dust and geared up for the days ahead, bolstered by Publisher Robert Hall's choice of Walker Lundy, editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, as Rosenthal's successor. "For about two hours after Bob Hall announced that Rosey was leaving...I felt like crying," Biddle says. "I felt like a fool for not taking the buyout." When Lundy's name was announced, "I really felt that there was still hope for the paper."

In August Knight Ridder executives P. Anthony Ridder, Steven B. Rossi and Jerry Ceppos came to Philadelphia as part of a mini-tour of the company's newspapers. "After a difficult year economically, we wanted to meet with the news staff...and others to see how they were doing," says Ceppos, the company's vice president/news.

The Knight Ridder contingent met separately with the staffs of the Daily News, the company's feisty tabloid, and the Inquirer. Says Hall, "People describe the [Inquirer] meeting in very different ways, depending on the views you had walking into the meeting." But many agree it didn't go well.

The staff expressed anger, Phillips recalls. And it was clear that a lot of people "felt Knight Ridder was to blame for all that was going wrong at the Inquirer."

Hall says he "probably would've liked to have seen it go smoother, but I thought the meeting was one that was beneficial." It was "a good, hard, open exchange. Whenever you have that, in my opinion, it's beneficial. But it's usually a tough meeting." Ceppos seconds that assessment.

The meeting did succeed in firing up the rumor mill: Would Rosenthal or Hall be asked to step down? Reporter Thomas Ginsberg remembers Ridder, the company's chairman and CEO, telling the staff that they should feel good about what they do and that the "problems at the paper are not the fault of the reporters.... That started rumblings of when Rosey and when Bob Hall..."

On November 6, word spread before a scheduled staff meeting could be assembled that Rosenthal, who joined the paper in 1979 and led it for four years, was out. Tears fell. He left that day to a crescendo of applause.

The fact that the company "found him expendable," says Biddle, "is offensive."

Despite what some staffers perceived as hints of things to come, Hall and Ceppos say this wasn't a corporate-mandated resignation. It was Hall's decision, prompted by disagreements with Rosenthal about the direction of the paper, mainly over local news.

Both men agree that Hall wanted more local news faster. Hall told the staff that two other points of dispute were over length of stories and the amount of local news on page one, pre-September 11. "That's not to say that I don't think long stories have their place," Hall says. "But I think you really have to be careful," as readers are pressed for time. "You've got to make it shorter and easier to use."

Rosenthal, 53, says they "both got frustrated with what [Hall] thought wasn't enough local emphasis on page one." The editor says it was hard to move people around at the same time the newsroom was losing about 100 staffers within an eight- to 10-month period. "I found it difficult to make all the changes as quickly as he wanted," Rosenthal says. "And from my point of view, there were a lot of issues about skills and about people, and it wasn't simply a matter of shifting jobs. Reporters and editors are not interchangeable parts."

Since January 2000, the Inquirer newsroom has declined by 16 percent to about 525 to 550 people, according to Hall. The Newspaper Guild puts the decline at 23 percent and the current staff at 485. Each side disputes the other's method of counting. Regardless, there are plenty of empty cubicles. "The current staff level is at its lowest point since the mid-'80s," Hall says.

The industry staff-size rule of thumb is one journalist for every 1,000 in circulation. The Inquirer--and all but two Knight Ridder newspapers--are still staffed above that benchmark, says Polk Laffoon, Knight Ridder's vice president/corporate relations.

The past year's departures caused Rosenthal to move some people into positions they weren't ready for, the former editor admits, and he struggled with how to reassign staffers and preserve other coverage areas, among them national, foreign and investigative. "It became much harder for me to see how to do that with the standards I believe in as the newsroom shrunk."

These conflicts, Hall and Rosenthal say, were never personal, and even though some staffers say they were aware of the tension, there wasn't overt evidence of it. The downsizing pressures in a down economy ultimately made the differences of opinion untenable. Deputy Managing Editor Hank Klibanoff offers one theory: "I think when the pressure of corporatization...becomes so powerful...it forces brothers in combat to turn against one another." Whatever happened between them, Klibanoff adds, "has to be seen in the context of what happens when the importance of covering the news becomes secondary to increasing margins or profit.... I'm sorry to see it happen to those two guys."

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly how budget cuts have affected the content of the paper, but it's clear many news decisions have been made with an eye on the economy in the past year. The Sunday magazine--extremely popular with readers but a money loser that was in danger of dying--relaunched last February as a mix of old features and new and with TV Week, another money loser, incorporated into its pages. In the two weeks after its debut, about 8,100 readers complained to the paper, mostly about the absence of a stand-alone TV book. According to a column by Ombudsman Lillian Swanson, 112 people were upset enough to cancel the paper, though a promotional campaign sparked 900 others to become subscribers. At least some of those 900, however, live in the fringes of the circulation area, which had not been receiving the expensive-to-produce magazine at all for a few years.

Hall says that he "never heard so many negative complaints about a change than that one," but adds that readers now are reacting positively to the magazine. Associate Managing Editor Anne Gordon says it has reached its financial goals.

As the magazine was reconfigured, three Sunday stand-alone sections--Books, Life and Dining In and Out--were discontinued, though features of those sections were moved into the magazine or elsewhere. The Inquirer also scaled back zoning from five zones--including an ambitious "paper within a paper" in Chester County, Pennsylvania--to three. (A contradictory cost-cutting directive considering that Hall has pressed the newsroom to increase the amount of local news.) All of the paper's national bureaus--in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Denver--are empty save one. Those positions weren't filled as staffers left in the last year-and-a-half. (Three Inquirer reporters also work out of Knight Ridder's Washington bureau.)

There have been more changes: Newshole was cut, though Rosenthal says no more than at other papers. Deadlines are 30 minutes earlier, a move that saves money on production. It also has created problems, as some editions don't carry West Coast sports results. Hall says a ballyhooed incident in which some readers didn't get a World Series score occurred in "an insignificant amount of papers." He says the paper can go later on occasion to include important Philadelphia sports results and adds it will make unspecified changes to address the problem of late scores.

But the cutbacks aren't always readily apparent. The paper vigorously covered September 11 and its aftermath, a point of great pride among Inquirer staffers.

"I think our coverage of September 11, coming so quickly as it did after the buyouts, just showed that we can still do it," says legal reporter Emilie Lounsberry. The paper, for example, put together an extensive and touching special section on area residents who died. Gordon says hundreds of readers responded with praise to a September 13 full-page essay on the emotions the terrorist attacks elicited. And on other big stories--the murder trial of Rabbi Fred Neulander, charged with ordering a hit man to kill his wife, and the anthrax scare in New Jersey--the paper has been as solid an Inky as ever.

"I think this paper has been as good as it ever was...all fall," says metro columnist Monica Yant Kinney. But on a fundamental level, the absences are discernible. "It doesn't take too much of a detective to realize we used to have a reporter in Atlanta" and New York and Los Angeles. Now, "we have Larry Fish in Denver covering the nation.... The really fine stories that Rich Jones did in Atlanta that aren't there anymore...I miss them."

What happens to those national bureaus is yet to be determined. Hall says the bureaus give the paper "a lot of benefit," but part of Lundy's job will be to determine how best to use the Inquirer's resources. "If less national bureaus is appropriate," Hall says, "then maybe that's the answer.... That's totally an open issue."

As is what to do with Rome, the one empty foreign bureau. London, Jerusalem and Johannesburg are operating as usual. A few years ago, Moscow and Beijing, two Inquirer bureaus paid for with Knight Ridder funds, were put under the company's control. As for Rome, Hall says the paper is trying to decide if that's the best place to have a foreign bureau.

The absence of those who took buyouts is felt in immeasurable ways. Managing Editor William "Butch" Ward, Assistant Managing Editor/Enterprise Marc Duvoisin and Pulitzer winners David Zucchino and Gilbert M. Gaul were among those in a long train of departing staffers. Reporter Ginsberg, who joined the paper in 1997, says Gaul was "a master" of the Freedom of Information Act and could tell you exactly how to get documents. Ginsberg loved "chatting over stories" with Duvoisin. "How do you measure that?" Ginsberg asks. Part of the Inquirer brain trust has vanished.

It is critical to point out that many people inside and outside the Inquirer, former employees included, say the current staff outmatches that of almost any other paper. But the Los Angeles Times has picked up at least five Inquirer staffers, says Editor John Carroll, "in a year where we're not doing much hiring." Many "have come to us," he says. "Based on the outflow of talent, I would say there's a big problem."

Enter Walker Lundy. The man charged with deciding what should be opened, closed, rearranged, rethought, reinstituted or done away with. Though he is following an adored editor and is the first top person not to come from within the paper's ranks since Gene Roberts arrived in 1972, many are hopeful that an outsider is just what the paper needs. "Any organization can benefit from an outside viewpoint," Gordon says. "We've got a knotty problem here, and any and all viewpoints are accepted."

Klibanoff and a group of editors had dinner with Lundy before he moved into his new office. "I really like the man," Klibanoff says, adding that he has no reason not to trust Lundy's judgment. "I hope that Walker Lundy sees something that we don't."

Rosenthal and Maxwell King, who was editor of the paper from 1990 to 1998, both worked under Roberts. King joined the paper the year that Roberts signed on, and he and Rosenthal have been viewed as carrying on the Gene tradition of quality journalism. King calls Roberts "the man that built that paper.... The rest of us thought of ourselves as stewards who would keep it strong."

When Roberts took control, he convinced his troops that the Inquirer could aspire to be the best paper in the country, period, regardless of the fact that it was in Philadelphia. Maintaining that kind of ambition is difficult and, perhaps, unrealistic. "It would be improbable," says Carroll, for the paper to sustain such a posture, "but in a way that's what made working at the Inquirer such an inspiring experience, because we were working against the odds and succeeding. And we weren't situated in New York or Washington or L.A." Carroll was at the Inquirer from 1973 to '79. "It's difficult; it's a high-wire act. But can it be sustained forever? I don't know. Empires rise and fall."

Roberts, who now teaches at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, says of today's Inky, "I think it's a good paper." He adds, "It doesn't have the depth and breadth it once did," but cautions that you have to take into account how much the newsroom has been cut. As for Rosenthal's exit, Roberts comments, "I know exactly the kind of problems that he had, because you could see them coming. Knight Ridder wasn't worrying enough about the future. You just can't milk the cow; you have to keep feeding it, too."

Rosenthal says he never felt he was bearing the torch for Roberts. "I don't have that big of an ego," he says. But the perception of Rosenthal as a Roberts guy is there, and ex-staffers such as King and former Executive Editor James M. Naughton fear Rosenthal's departure could mean the paper's lofty ambitions are at risk.

"I was saddened and worried to see such a fine journalist leave the Inquirer," says King, executive director of the Heinz Endowments. "I worry about whether the Inquirer will stay committed to the same kind of really hard-driving, serious-issue-oriented coverage." Yet, he adds, "I'm encouraged that somebody of Walker's stature and ability would be picked."

Naughton, president of the Poynter Institute, says one of the reasons he left in '96 was to get out of the way of younger talent such as Rosenthal and Butch Ward. "So," says Naughton, "it is really grievous to me that six years after I got out of their way, they're both gone."

What the Rosenthal exit/Lundy entrance signifies is largely a matter of speculation for now--and boy has speculation commenced. The "end of an era" comments from former staffers have struck many still in the newsroom as misguided missiles that hit the quality of the paper and them personally. Hall says he felt particularly bad for the staff. The one thing he takes exception to in the Rosenthal coverage, he says, is the idea that "all the good people have left.... We have a lot of good people still here."

And some think it may be just as well that the paper gets out from under the Roberts mantle. Roberts' departure came after several disagreements about the budget with Knight Ridder, and some believe that bad blood from that breakup continues to haunt the paper. Arlene Morgan, an assistant managing editor who left in August 2000, says she would hear "outright hostility" toward the Inquirer at company meetings. There's "clearly in the Knight Ridder family a jealousy about what the Inquirer had become under Gene Roberts," says Morgan, now assistant to the dean at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

It's not so much the man or the paper that gets under the corporate skin. It's the continuing admiration of Roberts and talk of the glory years. The "17 Pulitzers in 18 years" refrain plays over and over again in both Philadelphia and San Jose.

Knight Ridder's Polk Laffoon gave a hint of the irritation in a quote published in the Washington Post that garnered a lot of attention. The Post's Howard Kurtz wrote: " 'Our definition of what is good journalism here has evolved from the time Gene Roberts was editing the Philadelphia Inquirer' in the 1970s and '80s, [Laffoon] says. Rather than big investigative projects, 'we put a lot of emphasis on local news and useful or service-oriented features and news that readers tell us over and over that they want...health and nutrition, personal finance, personal technology.' "

Laffoon says he did not say, "rather than investigative projects"; he says he said "in addition to." (Replies Kurtz: "Polk Laffoon clearly said that Knight Ridder was putting more emphasis on what he calls service features than on investigative projects.") As for the Inky's ex-editor, Laffoon says: "We constantly hear about Gene Roberts and how everything was particularly special and particularly good under Gene Roberts. So Gene seems to be the standard by which everything else is compared.... Gene has been gone for 11 years." And, he adds, circulation declined under Roberts. "So I do find it ironic that Gene is always held out as the right way to go."

Penchants for the hard-driving, send-an-army journalism that Roberts espoused aren't going to die. But it would certainly serve the paper and the company well to put any 11-year-old bygones behind them once and for all. "It helps to have someone who's not perceived to be a Roberts person," says metro columnist and Guild officer Tom Ferrick Jr. He and other staffers hope Lundy will have more clout than Rosenthal with the Knight Ridder corporate offices in San Jose.

There's also hope that Lundy can be better at dealing with the business side of the job than Rosenthal was. Rosenthal is readily praised for being an energetic editor who was a warrior when it came to great stories. But a corporate business guy he is not. Before he signed on, he says, he wasn't aware of the "degree of difficulties of the politics" involved in the job--"the potential difficulty of not only pushing change down but pushing change up."

Knight Ridder has offered Rosenthal a prestigious writing job, he says. "In a lot of ways they'd like to keep me in terms of journalism. I think there were issues with me being a manager." He hasn't yet made a decision on the offer.

Philadelphia Daily News Editor Zack Stalberg, who was one of Hall's candidates for the Inky job but took himself out of the running, says Rosenthal is a "very, very decent guy." But in 2001, "the top editor's job at a paper is not a journalism job. It happens to include some journalism.... I think that constantly disappointed him."

There is one big piece of evidence that Lundy has some corporate savvy: He was originally asked to cut 23 people from the St. Paul newsroom – the 10 percent Knight Ridder asked of all its papers. "We made the case that that would have been harmful to our competitive situation against the evil Star Tribune [in Minneapolis]," Lundy says. "They understood that, accepted it, and we wound up cutting eight."

In the meantime, the "what's this Lundy guy all about" question at the Inquirer has been answered with a resounding, "Solid journalism." He has impressed staffers with his comments about the importance of investigative journalism, his early OK to some personnel changes Rosenthal had in the works, and his wait-and-see, eager-to-learn attitude.

Lundy, who started November 28, has taken a big step from a local paper to one with almost double the circulation and grand aspirations. He says he'll spend about two to three months learning about the paper and the Philadelphia area. As for the problem of how to cover the suburbs, the Inky may have already prepared a guidebook.

Tom Ferrick's favorite analogy for the Inquirer's challenge comes from the world of home improvement. Offering a lot more suburban coverage with a smaller staff, he says, is like hiring a contractor to build an addition to your house but telling him he can only use materials from the existing structure. You "end up with an addition that's pretty shabby," Ferrick says, not to mention the condition of the rest of the house.

In January 2001, Rosenthal rounded up some contractors. He asked Deputy Managing Editor Lou Ureneck to put together a group of people to figure out how the newsroom staff could best be reorganized. Thirty-one staffers had taken buyouts in December and attrition was beginning to take a toll. The task of this "beats committee" was essentially to build a paper that would provide a strong news report, including more local news, with the smaller staff. It might be more akin to renovating a house than erecting an addition.

Seven editors and three reporters met for months, soliciting suggestions and listening to presentations from the staff, brainstorming key coverage areas and new beats, strongly expressing their views, meeting for 10 to 12 hours at a time. One of the goals, Rosenthal says, was to "get more 1A-caliber stories from the region...and refocus our look into this market."

Ureneck says the committee didn't get serious about the number of staffers until the summer, after the announcement of the second round of buyouts. There was a lot of "counting and recounting and more counting," says reporter Lounsberry, "because the numbers changed in terms of the people." The finished report, delivered to Rosenthal August 31, proposed 208 beats, provided more coverage of the suburbs, maintained the foreign bureaus and all but one national bureau, and kept together an investigative special projects team. "I felt good about the plan," says Ureneck, who led the committee. "I think it would provide us with a strong...balanced and strategic--I would underscore the word strategic--news report" with a high level of public service journalism, and it would "help us in the battle to build circulation."

Hall says it's "a very sound, well-thought-out plan," and that "most if not all of it will be" implemented. From September 17 until the end of November, the paper posted and filled 26 jobs, most of them suburban beats, as well as a consumer column and regionwide beats on suburban culture, the environment, charter schools, health care, immigration and the business of culture. Those jobs were filled from within, of course, which was "very challenging," Ureneck says.

Lounsberry, Phillips and Seplow, the three reporters on the committee, say the plan is a good one. "I think it preserved a lot of the breadth of the Inquirer," says Seplow, who adds that they sought ways to facilitate discussions among reporters about regionalizing stories.

The beats committee worked to provide a vision for the Inquirer, something that many inside and outside the paper say has been fuzzy for some time. That's a theme Walker Lundy heard in early meetings with staffers, to which he says he responded, "I couldn't guarantee that everybody would agree with my direction, but I didn't think anybody in a few months will be confused about what it is."

Some of the current confusion stems from the paper's struggle to find the right approach--economically and editorially--to suburban news coverage. In 1980, says Metropolitan Editor Matt Golas, there were 12 daily newspapers in the suburbs competing with the Inquirer. Now there are 20. The front pages of each are tacked up on an area map in his office.

"So it's really complicated," Golas says. The competition is giving readers very localized, targeted news. "How do we survive as a paper that can cover the entire region" when readers want very local news, too?

Answering that question – and the vagaries of the budget--have resulted in many incarnations and false starts. In '89 there were nine twice-weekly Neighbors zones, including one distributed in the northeast section of the city. In the next three years, the Inquirer killed Northeast Neighbors, began daily zoning in South Jersey and created two separate zones in the Pennsylvania suburbs. By 1998, the paper had four daily zones: North (Bucks and Montgomery counties in Pennsylvania), West (Chester and Delaware counties), Philadelphia and South Jersey. Each county also received a Sunday Neighbors section.

The following year the paper got serious about offering readers a detailed local report without taking away anything from the main paper. With much anticipation, effort and pride, it launched the Chester County edition, a "paper within a paper," as it was called, replete with its own obituaries, letters to the editor, calendar of events and high-school sports. It added circulation in that county. The paper promoted it. Reporters and editors who worked on the section--about 18 of them – "put their guts into it," Rosenthal says. The idea was to use that edition, and one started at the same time in South Jersey, as models for comparable papers within a paper in the other Pennsylvania suburban counties.

But it wasn't a cheap startup. Golas estimates it cost $2 million a year to operate, and when the economy turned south, so did the Chester County edition. In mid-April, the paper within a paper was scrapped, and the three suburban Pennsylvania zones were merged into one. That makes three zones now--if you're still counting.

All of which raises the question: What now? "We just have been schizophrenic about what we give people and where we put it," says metro columnist Kinney. "We give them something and then take it away.... It's not fair, and it's insulting."

Knight Ridder's Ceppos acknowledges that the Inquirer's situation makes local coverage "very challenging." He can't think of another paper that faces such a divided circulation area and such staggering competition. "On the other hand," he says, "a paper of the Inquirer's quality should be able to find a formula that appeals to suburban readers."

Golas and others say the Chester County experiment wasn't given enough time to make money. "It takes longer than two years," Golas says.

Why the backpedaling? The shrinking staff and the desire to cut costs caused Inquirer executives to create a committee to determine the most efficient way to do zoning, Rosenthal says. Its members were charged with reaching a specific target for savings, and the pricey Chester County initiative didn't make the cut. (Hall and Rosenthal agree that even if money weren't an issue, it's not certain the paper could solve the logistical problems posed by publishing each of the anticipated separate county editions.)

Some staffers were dismayed that the newsroom invested in targeted coverage, only to jettison it for business reasons. "I could not be convinced that Bob Rosenthal was less interested in local news at this paper," says Deputy Managing Editor Klibanoff. "It was not the newsroom that killed [the Chester County edition], it was production costs."

Editorial staffers weren't the only ones who were disheartened. Mac McKeithen, the paper's marketing director who took a buyout last summer, says in his three-and-a-half years with the company, the loss of the Chester County edition "was the single most important and disappointing turn of events.... We had all the plans in place to roll out the paper within a paper throughout the region."

Says Golas, "So the conundrum for us now is if [the Chester County report] was an expensive but winning strategy...how do we proceed?... A lot of people are hoping...we can get a mission," he adds, "and stick to it for five years or seven years.... The readers can be very confused."

Yes, they can, and they've picked up on the identity problem. "It isn't clear to me what the paper sees as its own mission," says Sam Katz, CEO of Greater Philadelphia First, a business leadership organization, and a former mayoral candidate. "It probably tries to be too many things to too many consumers."

"I think the Inquirer is going through, as many big urban dailies are going through, a true identity crisis, and it's not simple," says Stephan Rosenfeld, president of a communications consulting firm called Identity Advisors and a former journalist who worked for the Daily News in the 1970s. "There's so much Monday-morning quarterbacking going on in the industry and in the market to try and diagnose what's wrong with this patient. I think much of that is grossly unfair, by the way.... [The paper] still has certain stars on its staff that I'll put up against anybody in the industry."

Ted Beitchman, editor and publisher of a new magazine called Real Philly, agrees the paper lacks a clear mission. While he praises a number of the writers on the paper's daily Magazine section, he adds, "the whole rest of the paper almost seems to be a sleepwalk, and there's no compelling reason to read it."

Katz gives the business, features, national and international coverage and the writing high marks. But the metro section and the Neighbors sections "are completely a mess as far as I'm concerned." As a reader who lives in the city, he says, "I'm not prepared to believe that there aren't important stories in the suburbs that I might want to know about."

A reader after George Anastasia's heart. The Inky reporter says the paper has "overzoned" and "devalued the metro page." The zones cause coverage to fall along geographical lines, and story selection is based on point of origin rather than strength, Anastasia says.

"It's not freaking brain surgery," he says. The answer, he says, is to pick the best stories, cover them, and if you miss a zoning story, "who gives a shit?" The paper can't tackle local coverage the way the suburban papers do, he adds.

"Why compete with them in the only place they can beat us?"

He's not the only one expressing such views; he just might be the one saying them the longest and loudest. He's been giving this speech for at least 15 years.

Shrinking circulation--a source of woe at many newspapers--has been, in Philadelphia, downright depressing. The Inquirer's circulation today (365,000 daily and 732,000 Sunday) is lower than it was in 1981, the year before the Roberts Inquirer at last succeeded in putting the once-dominant Bulletin out of business.

Some staffers express frustration that business-side cuts are part of the problem, and yet content--journalism--seems to be getting all the blame. Many mention lack of marketing as a major obstacle. "I do worry that we're treating the wrong end of the patient," says reporter Lounsberry. "We're our own best-kept little secret." Since promotion of the new magazine early in 2001, says columnist Kinney, "I can't even think of the last time I saw an advertisement for the Inquirer."

Hall says the last six months of sliding circulation didn't trigger Rosenthal's departure, but the perception that it did took hold in the newsroom, as his exit came shortly after the numbers were released. Says Klibanoff: "I'm not sure where the idea came about that the most significant failing at the Inquirer is content-related. It just doesn't make sense."

Business-side cuts are a big part of the problem. Hall says a majority of the 7 percent circulation dip in the last six months can be traced to cost-savings decisions that eliminated promotional programs designed to build or help retain circulation. In fact, Hall says he expected the recent decline.

That message somehow didn't make it to many in the newsroom. Rosenthal says Senior Vice President/Operations John Walsh briefed newsroom managers on cuts in the circulation department after the numbers were released. But staffers have taken the drop pretty hard.

"Circulation is influence," says Gordon. When the tally came out, it was a "very sobering moment for the newsroom."

When newspapers hack away at their budgets, newsroom trims garner most of the attention. But business-side cuts can have a serious impact on successfully getting the paper into readers' hands. Of the 240 people who left Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., parent of the Inquirer and Daily News, in the second buyout, 75 percent were noneditorial staffers.

Asked what's behind the circulation drop, Hall names marketing and promotion first--in a long list of other factors. "We haven't sustained promotion and marketing efforts over time," he says. That's something that will be reinstituted this year, as the paper embarks on a concerted effort to increase circulation each month. The Inquirer "cut out solicitation, we cut out some promotion, made a change in production," knowing it "would take a short-term hit," Hall says.

Now funds that have been diverted from other areas will be funneled back into circulation and promotion. "We are saying," the publisher says, "regardless of the economy, we have to be committed to growing circulation."

Those short-term cuts could make upping the readership a challenge, says former Marketing Director Mac McKeithen. A newspaper, he says, has to work very hard to remind people why they should buy it.

It's unclear what impact the past year's cutbacks will have on the paper's future. Rosenthal, for one, feels there weren't enough discussions about the road ahead. "The consequences of things that were done with the Inquirer because of revenue declines, in my view, were short-term solutions rather than long-term, very challenging, strategic decisions," he says. "And I'm not sure that those consequences or issues were discussed...well enough."

Now it's time to pick up the pieces and move forward. At a quarterly meeting with managers on November 30, Hall said revenue for the company was down $80 million compared with last year. (PNI grossed $604.3 million in 2000.) Profits were down $28 million. (Knight Ridder as a whole posted an operating profit margin of 13.5 percent for the first nine months of 2001, 7.1 percentage points lower than it achieved the year before.)

Hall said at that meeting the tough times were mostly in the past. There would not be a wage freeze, and any additional staff reductions would come through attrition. The hiring freeze would be "modified," he said, when necessary. A return to county-by-county zoning won't happen until at least July, and if it does happen, Hall said, "we will have a plan that I guarantee will be sustainable."

He gave himself an "A-triple-plus for creating anxiety, turmoil and uncertainty." But the publisher is ready for the paper to develop a clear vision for the future--and stick to it. He has plenty of company. "The staff will understand where we're headed, and I think we can maximize or capitalize" on that, he tells AJR, if everybody is "rowing in the same direction."

And if everybody is onboard. This story reflects the friction present in many conversations about newspapering today. Journalists--not all, but many--are left thinking that their corporate bosses don't understand what they need to put out a high-quality newspaper. Knight Ridder, conversely, has a tough time getting across why cuts are necessary and has faced critical press coverage in the process. There's a clash every time economic decisions are made, and neither side seems to be speaking the other's language. "How did we end up becoming the enemy?" asks Ferrick.

If everyone from the copy desk to CEO are to forge ahead together, what can be done to bridge this disconnect?

Knight Ridder VP Jerry Ceppos says he's not certain there is a disconnect, then quickly adds, "I'm sure there is with some people." But as he travels to the company's newsrooms, he says, he talks journalism, not numbers. In an interview, he mentions the year's highlights: terrorism coverage and the Miami Herald's Knight Ridder-financed election recount analysis, released months before a consortium of many of the nation's top news organizations published its results. "So, I think when people look at the journalism...[they] feel good about what they're doing."

In an era in which top editors are deeply involved with business concerns, Ceppos says he would like editors to guard their time and spend more of it focusing on journalism, an approach he says he shares with Walker Lundy. If the past is any indication of the future, it won't be easy.

But. Still. The Inquirer newsroom is rooting for the new editor, holding on to hope that he can carve out a successful plan of attack. Says Lounsberry: "I, for one, am not ready to give up on the Philadelphia Inquirer."