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Richard Aregood: Leaving the tower, ivory & otherwise, and watching sales in the sunset

ADMITTEDLY, when we called the white building at Broad and Callowhill streets the "Tower of Truth," there was a touch of irony. Reporters are big on irony.

ADMITTEDLY, when we called the white building at Broad and Callowhill streets the "Tower of Truth," there was a touch of irony. Reporters are big on irony.

The papers are moving out of the tower soon. Recently, the management took big steps away from the truth. Even allowing for irony, it's a self-destructive act for newspapers that are already in deep trouble.

Newspapers are businesses. That was true when they were obscenely profitable, and it's still true, even now that much of the money has migrated to things like circulars and Craigslist. Newspapers are also very different kinds of businesses. They portray themselves as guardians of the public trust and the First Amendment. Readers expect them to keep that promise.

That's why the continuing fuss over yet another sale, this time of Philadelphia Media Network, parent company of the papers, is so distressing. The handling of the newspapers' coverage of the negotiations has raised the issue of their credibility at the worst possible time.

Reporting has been deleted in the interest of one favored bidder. This follows a painful lack of public candor about tax breaks for the new headquarters in the old Strawbridge and Clothier building. Even though the company has promised that self-censorship won't happen again, a reader has to be wondering, especially because the favored bidder is a consortium of political figures. These days, newspapers are often victim of unfair criticism from those who think that anything opposed to their beliefs is a conspiracy of evil. The last thing you'd think a newspaper management would want to do is provide them with live ammunition.

Come to think of it, if I were one of the investors in PMN, I'd question why the hedge-fund Masters of the Universe who control my money don't want to entertain more bids than the one. I'd be looking for the best possible price in the shortest time practicable, without regard to anything else, not even the fate of the current management under new owners. I suspect that I wouldn't care very much about the future of journalism, either.

But I do care. Those newspapers are a critical part of the fabric of Philadelphia. Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman, of the Daily News, won a Pulitzer Prize for defending ordinary people nobody important cares about against official oppression. The Inquirer exposed state Sen. Vince Fumo's criminal enterprise masquerading as public service. The list is long and the contribution essential.

By altering coverage, the management disrespected its own mission and shot itself in the foot with an automatic weapon. It also endangered the value of the papers. Philadelphians are very familiar with the fix being in. It is a city in which the readers are fully as dubious about big shots as the journalists are.

When I first came to the Daily News nearly 50 years ago, the Inquirer was a disgrace, with coverage based on the personal dislikes and prejudices of the owner. Its political coverage was toxic and laughable. The atmosphere was so thick with journalistic dishonesty that the star reporter was running his own extortion scheme based on what he decided to cover. The Daily News was better only because the owner didn't care about it. It took decades and a fortune to reverse all that, and the public perception of it.

I'm not drawing a parallel here. The sins now are comparatively venial. At least they're not felonies. The only common threads are trust and the mission of telling all the truth as best you know it. That's what the journalists are talking about in their public statement last Friday about journalistic integrity, and it's what the unions are also saying. (For full disclosure purposes: I am a former president of the Philadelphia local of the Newspaper Guild and still admire the late John Morris, of the Teamsters, one of the best men I ever met.)

The means of delivering news are changing. The future is in digital delivery, even though a company spokesman said that altering a blog wasn't the same as messing with the print product, which only shows his inability to get the point. But the basic precepts of honest and fair journalism are the same, as an amazing number of endangered journalists said in their petition last Friday, which I signed as an alumnus.

If you're reading this in the Daily News, perhaps the money guys are starting to understand that critical point. Next time, we'll take a look at plans for the newspapers to share some reporting resources, an issue that may be as fraught as the issue of who owns the place.