Update on How the Philly Inquirer’s ‘Woke’ Newsroom Mission is Going

Update on How the Philly Inquirer’s ‘Woke’ Newsroom Mission is Going

Many of you may recall how last year, about a week or so after the protests and the violent rioting and looting over the officer-involved death of George Floyd began, that the Philadelphia Inquirer landed itself in hot water with some of its “woke” reporters and readers after running an opinion piece that included the headline “Buildings Matter, Too,” which was a play on the “Black Lives Matter” slogan.

As long I live I’ll never forget the @PhillyInquirer saying “Buildings Matter, Too.” pic.twitter.com/NrVtKOyH1i

— jason peters (@JPeters2100) July 1, 2020

The piece, written by the paper’s design and architecture critic Inga Saffron, rightfully argued that in torching and destroying entire city blocks, which is what happened in big Democrat-run cities across the country like Minneapolis and Philadelphia, that so-called “protesters” were hurting some of the very people they claimed they wanted to help.

The headline was initially changed to “Black Lives Matter. Do Buildings?” and then later to one that more explicitly reflected that message (“Damaging buildings disproportionately hurts the people protesters are trying to uplift”) just so offended readers and reporters would know the paper wasn’t really equating black lives to buildings, and an apology was issued the following day. But it wasn’t enough for the roughly 40 reporters who called in “sick and tired” two days after the column was published:

These "journalists" live in a bubble. They're more outraged by a "Buildings Matter, Too" headline than by the destruction of entire neighborhoods in their own city.

These aren't just buildings. They're people's lives. pic.twitter.com/TzAJxzeDNK

— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) June 4, 2020

This surreal report from CBS Philly at the time on the uproar over the headline shows how “woke dogma” pretty much took over the paper and city in the midst of the protests and rioting, noting that one restaurant that graciously offered free meals to Philly police officers ended up rescinding the offer after some in the community alleged they were picking sides in the Black Lives Matter/Defund the Police fight:

In addition to the reporters who didn’t show up for work in protest, senior VP and executive editor Stan Wischnowski, who had worked for the paper for 20 years, stepped down, though it’s still unclear whether he was forced out or made the choice himself.

The result of all the blowback the paper received over the headline and what reporters described in their nastygram as a newsroom where the opinions and input from journalists of color were routinely ignored, the Philly Inquirer began a campaign to soothe the ruffled feathers of their upset staff members by seeking to further “diversify” their newsroom and make it more “woke.” The project, which is still ongoing, is titled “Inquirer for All.”

Over a year after that process started, Poynter has released a progress report on a six-month audit they’d done on the paper’s progress on the “antiracist” front. The report included some rather unintentionally illuminating and troubling information about the procedures they’ve put in place:

Creating an antiracist work culture requires more than hiring BIPOC journalists. Staff expressed concerns about retention of BIPOC staff (just under half of those who left in the six months following the audit identified as BIPOC journalists). While some managers suggested that it was expected that talent would be poached because the Inquirer was no longer viewed by some as a “destination newspaper,” other staff suggested more needed to be done to create a working environment in which BIPOC journalists felt their life experiences were acknowledged and welcomed.

Finally, building an antiracist work culture requires management to hold employees accountable and to incentivize antiracist newsroom practices. One way the Inquirer is attempting this is by building DEI goals into their performance management system, particularly for editors. As one manager explained, centering antiracism as a “core value” meant editors who were not on board with that would experience “pain points” that they hoped would spur shifts: “Either you change or you opt out.” [emphasis mine]

Author/essayist Wesley Yang broke down the findings on his Twitter feed:

The purge is never finished

"Either you change or you opt out." https://t.co/AdZCjtWgpg pic.twitter.com/CaMV4nSrfm

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) August 27, 2021

Medicalization of daily life through endlessly expansive construction of terms alert pic.twitter.com/r8DNSG6tFy

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) August 27, 2021

“Journalism norms and traditions that have historically bolstered whiteness including the dominant interpretation of objectivity as “the view from nowhere.””

There is a real critique of the view from nowhere.

In practice this means, you must publish maudlin cringe pic.twitter.com/WkudmmMxU7

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) August 27, 2021

Though these “woke” approaches, unfortunately, appear to be the wave of the future in American newsrooms, don’t be surprised to see many of them eventually collapse under their own weight as we’re seeing happen slowly at the New York Times, where mob rule saw a 47-year-veteran of the paper forced into resigning earlier this year after he was falsely accused of racism simply because he used the “n-word” in the course of conversation with a journalism student who specifically asked him a question that revolved around the use of the n-word.

As these generational battles between older liberals and younger ones in U.S. newsrooms continue to take root, a key point to keep in mind is that while it’s not necessarily wrong to want a diverse newsroom, what is wrong is when calls for diversity are used as launching points to do they very thing white editors and managers are accused of doing: silencing voices for daring to engage in WrongThink.

Two years ago, New York Times science columnist John Tierney, who is also a contributing editor at City Journal, opined that the best approach to counter this mindset was a two-pronged one:

But all editors and publishers can take a couple of basic steps. One is to concentrate on hiring journalists committed to the most important kind of diversity: a wide range of ideas open for vigorous debate. The other step is even simpler: stop capitulating. Ignore the online speech police, and don’t reward the staff censors, either. Instead of feeling their pain or acceding to their demands, give them a copy of Nat Hentoff’s Free Speech for Me—but Not for Thee. If they still don’t get it—if they still don’t see that free speech is their profession’s paramount principle—tactfully suggest that their talents would be better suited to another line of work.

Amen.

— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —

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