The
Philadelphia Daily News is not your average mainstream big media newspaper. For one thing, it's an in-your-face urban tabloid with a brash, question-authority style that most newspapers abandoned (if they ever had it) a long time ago. Even though we're a throwback in what Philadelphians call "attytood," we also offer one of the first newspaper blogs -- my own, called
Attytood -- and one of the first podcasts,
PhillyFeed.
More importantly for Daily Kos readers, the PDN -- which calls itself "The People Paper" -- has been a fiercely independent voice politically, even when the rest of the MSM was cowed into submission after 9/11.
We were the first very newspaper in the nation to
endorse John Kerry in 2004, because we saw the urgency in ending the White House calamnity of George W. Bush. We were one of the first (and only) newspapers to ask
the unanswered questions of 9/11 , and one of the first to report on the
pre-war machinations of the Project for a New American Century.
Now, we may have just days to live. Our big media parent, Knight-Ridder, is on the sale block, pressured by its largest investors, including a major campaign contributor to George W. Bush. Yesterday, a major Wall Street analyst said a new buyer would almost certainly shut down the Daily News.
Here's what the San Jose Mercury-News (a Knight-Ridder paper, incidentally) reported this morning (by way of the Daily News):
"...the San Jose Mercury-News is reporting today that one leading stock analyst says a new private buyer might pursue a "scorched-earth" policy that would include slashing $350 million in costs, including more than 1,000 jobs, and closing the Daily News.
In a 33-page note to clients, Morgan Stanley newspaper analyst Douglas Arthur "speculated that any potential buyer would likely shut down the Philadelphia Daily News," according to the San Jose report."
So I've told you why you should care about saving the Daily News...but what can you do about it? Well, at least two things:
- We need your ideas. The collected brainpower of Daily Kos can do some amazing things (just ask a guy named Jeff Guckert) and in this harsh climate for newspapers, the Daily News will need some outside-the-box thinking to survive.
- We may need your connections. Clearly, for the DN to live, we will need a buyer, someone with a commitment to what an idependent newspaper can mean both for Philadelphia and for America, maybe even a non-profit foundation. We need George Soros' private cell number (just kidding...OK, not really!) or any other leads you can provide us.
Kossacks didn't give up when George W. Bush was swown in for a second term, and look at the amazing things that are happening today.
Please don't give up on the Philadelphia Daily News.