Easy to hold, fun to read — hard to kill?

ROLFE NEILL WAS the first editor of the Daily News after the sale to Knight Newspapers Inc. more than 40 years ago. A master of promotion and branding, one of his first acts as editor was to demand that the building at Broad and Callowhill streets bear the name of both newspapers above the entrance. Until then, the Daily News was effectively a tenant in its own headquarters – in the Inquirer Building.

And it was done. In fact, the message was so clear that the simple block letters of the Daily News logo were visually dominant over the fussy gothic script of the Inquirer's. It was an affirmation that "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers," the Daily News stepchildren, had a chance of attracting the creative and financial support of the parent company. At the Daily News, every day since its founding has been another Agincourt fight for survival.

Before I drive this Shakespearian metaphor over a cliff, let's consider recent events that give those of us who love the Daily News and what it stands for the heebie-jeebies. We worked hard for decades to establish an identity (a "brand," for those who speak management) as a publication that gave voice to ordinary people in Philadelphia's neighborhoods, one that had the best sports coverage in the country and an editorial page that took no prisoners.

Then business turned bad, and a few things happened:

The Daily News was reclassified as an edition of the Inquirer for circulation audit purposes, like a version of South Jersey Neighbors that folded funny.

It was decided that the papers would share content on nonexclusive stories, which you may have noticed means that each contains content from the other. For those of us who admired the separate identities and approaches of the papers, it blurs their reason for existing.

Then it was decided that after the hedge-fund geniuses dealt off the real estate, a new office downtown would merge the staffs into a single newsroom, further blurring the distinction.

The new headquarters? No Daily News sign at the entrance, reversing Neill's long-ago struggle, citing Historical Commission objections. The publisher was quoted helpfully suggesting that the Daily News logo could be part of window treatments.

Presumably, these changes might save a few bucks, and we all know that newspapers are an endangered species in the cities, with falling profits and circulation. The Inquirer has been cut to the bone; the Daily News has had a limb or two amputated. Both papers have impressively kept on despite the handicaps, what with the Inquirer's Pulitzer this week and the Daily News' most recent Pulitzer two years ago.

There is even more justification for them to keep their identity on the digital platform, where philly.com could comfortably offer both papers in a form altered for the Web, where brands look to be fully as important as they are on the newsstand.

I have great empathy for those who are trying to find a solid business model.

But chipping away at the Daily News and making it nothing more distinctive than a tabloid-folding mini-Inquirer makes this paranoid old reporter wonder whether the Daily News is deliberately being made less itself and less relevant so it's easier to kill. n

Richard Aregood, whose editorial writing won a Pulitzer for the Daily News in 1985, is the Charles R. Johnson Professor of Journalism at the University of North Dakota.