Happy 100th birthday to my beloved Philadelphia Daily News
We were underdogs in the city of underdogs and it not only made us hungry, it made us a pack.
When people ask me what my favorite journalism movie is, I think they expect me to say something serious, like Spotlight or All the President’s Men, but it’s actually a lesser-known 1994 Ron Howard film starring Michael Keaton called The Paper.
It’s about the ragtag staff of an underdog newspaper, their many, many foibles (Randy Quaid plays a columnist, if that gives you any insight), and their commitment to getting a story right, in order to right a wrong. The movie also contains a ton of cursing. I love it because it most reminds me of the paper that made me the journalist I am, the Philadelphia Daily News.
Today, the Daily News marks its 100th anniversary. On March 31, 1925, the front page of the first edition featured a headline that read “WATCHMAN WOUNDED BY SUSPECT.” It was accompanied by a real photo of a city street with an overlay illustration of one man shooting another on it, what my former colleague Jon Snyder described as “‘Photoshopped’ the old school way.”
Other stories on the tabloid’s cover that day, all of which had accompanying photos, were about a missing actress, the second wife of a dead millionaire seeking $4 million from his estate, and a sergeant (unclear if he was military or police) who thought about “dinner and other pleasant things” while parachuting 1,500 feet (it’s unclear where from — we got better at reporting over time).
In the 100 years since that first edition, the Daily News has gone through many iterations, many owners, and many staffers. While the Daily News has had the same owner as The Inquirer for decades and was housed in the same building, first on North Broad Street and then on Market, for much of that time the newsrooms were staunch competitors, which fueled an intense, but mostly healthy, rivalry.
The Inquirer was the big sister who got all the attention and we were the small, scrappy stepchild with moxie who would not be ignored. Our headlines were loud, our stories were wild (but true!), and we wouldn’t have had it any other way. We were underdogs in the city of underdogs and it not only made us hungry, it made us a pack.
“We don’t make much money around here, but we sure have a lot of fun,” my colleague Barbara Laker once said.
The newsroom was a motley crew of misfits who loved to laugh and never took themselves too seriously or anything too personally. We cared little about proper workplace etiquette, but we cared very much about each other and this city.
When I came to the Daily News in 2007 with just three years of journalism experience under my belt, I’d never covered a murder, a protest, or a major news conference. Within my first month, I did all three. We were a small staff and there was no time for lollygaggers or learning curves. But there were editors who took the time to make me a better reporter and writer, and that made all the difference in the world.
“This is not a place where we practice academia,” former managing editor Wendy Warren once said. “This is a place where we get things done.”
Covering crime for the Daily News for many years helped me get to know this city and the people in it, in a way that I will forever be grateful for. Philadelphians opened their hearts and homes to me, a stranger, often during the worst moments of their lives. People trusted the Daily News, and in turn, I was given their trust too, which was an incredible gift.
But this is a birthday, and I want to celebrate the happy and wacky Daily News stories, like when I reported on a wedding that took place at a funeral. The deceased had promised to give the bride away and his family made sure he remained true to his word.
“He was dressed for the occasion,” his widow told me.
There was the time I attended a news conference where former Upper Darby Police Chief Michael Chitwood had his officers demonstrate their new Taser guns — on him — in front of a group of reporters.
“Ahhh [expletive] ahhh [expletive] me,” Chitwood screamed. “There’s ladies around or I’d tell you where my anatomy is right now.”
In 2011, I wrote about a pizza shop owner who sabotaged his competitors by hiding mice in their ceiling. The story later became fodder for Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live.
And then there was the 2013 story my editor assigned me to write about a vocal coach who was in Philly for a symposium and was extolling the virtues of using a particular brand of high-end vibrator — yes, that type of vibrator — to loosen up performers’ vocal cords.
About two weeks after the story ran, a giant, unmarked brown box was delivered to the newsroom. When I opened it, it was full of 10 high-end vibrators that were sent — totally unsolicited — by the company whose vibrators the Canadian scholar extolled.
But my favorite moment in the Daily News newsroom remains the day in 2010 that Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for their series on a rogue narcotics squad. It was the paper’s third Pulitzer, following Signe Wilkinson’s for editorial cartooning in 1992 and Richard Aregood’s for editorial writing in 1985.
I’ve never seen such pure surprise and joy spread over a room so quickly. The champagne arrived before the cups and Ruderman was so excited, she took off one of her dirty sneakers, filled it with champagne, and drank from it.
Our underdog little paper had won the biggest prize in print journalism and for a little while, it felt like we were on top of the world, or at least, Philadelphia.
But nothing lasts forever. Over the years, a declining industry and layoffs decimated our staff numbers, and in 2016, what was left of the Daily News was merged into The Inquirer newsroom. While there are still two newspaper products, the content within is written by the same staff and there’s no competition. We are all one big newsroom now.
A handful of us old Daily News staffers remain at the Inquirer, and I’d like to think we try to keep the paper’s spirit alive, in whatever way we can. Among them are senior multiplatform editor Joe Berkery whose amazingly punny headlines still grace the cover of the Daily News; Laker and Ruderman, whose investigative reporting is still making waves and changing lives; and columnists Jenice Armstrong, Will Bunch, and Helen Ubiñas, whose powerful opinion pieces hold our city and our politicians to account.
I’m grateful to The Inquirer readers who’ve graciously accepted and encouraged me and my offbeat sense of humor over the years. It means more than I could ever relate. Because while I’m an Inquirer staffer now, in my heart I’ll always be a Daily News girl.
As a former colleague once said, “You can take the journalist out of the Daily News, but you can never take the Daily News out of the journalist.”