Tag Archives: The Philadelphia Inquirer

Jan 13

Philadelphia Metropolis

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Metropolis - Philadelphia News and Journalism

Metrop­o­lis is a “news, analy­sis and com­men­tary” site from vet­eran Philadel­phia reporter Tom Fer­rick (Wikipedia). An alum of The Philadel­phia Inquirer, Tom’s spent the last half-dozen years talk­ing to every­one who will lis­ten about the future of print and Philly news. He’s done talk­ing and is show­ing what can be done on a bud­get bud­get. From “This is Metrop­o­lis,” the lead article:

Local news­pa­pers, TV and radio sta­tions are retreat­ing from in-depth cov­er­age of regional news either due to eco­nomic or audi­ence considerations.

The retreat has been grad­ual, but no one expects it to stop. The com­pany that owns the region’s largest news­pa­pers — the Inquirer and Daily News — is in bank­ruptcy. The size of the edi­to­r­ial staffs at the papers con­tin­ues to shrink. The prog­no­sis for metro dailies here and else­where is not good. The jour­nal­ism prac­ticed by these papers is still robust, but the eco­nomic model that has sus­tained it is erod­ing. If these tra­di­tional sources of news fal­ter or fail what will take their place?

The site was built in Mov­able Type. The most promi­nent fea­ture is the slideshow dis­play of fea­tured arti­cles. Tom has seen a sim­i­lar effect on another jour­nal­ism site and a search found the “Slid­ing Hor­i­zon­tal Ban­ner Rota­tor” at Active Den, a great site to pur­chase pre-built Flash files. Mov­able Type entries are out­fit­ted with cus­tom fields to enter images and links. Mov­able Type then cre­ates a cus­tom XML file for the “Main Sto­ries” feed, which is then picked up and dis­played by the Flash ban­ner. In addi­tion, the site uses Google Adsense to pro­vide income.

Visit: Philadel­phia Metropolis

Con­tinue read­ing →

Jul 13

Julie’s church in the news

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The Philadel­phia Inquirer “wrote an article”:http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20070710_Reviving_a_Latin_past.html on Julie’s “tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholic church”:http://www.materecclesiae.org/home.php this week and “even pro­duced a video”:http://www.philly.com/inquirer/multimedia/8395712.html that gives you a feel of the wor­ship. Because of the two lit­tle ones we try to alter­nate between her church and Friends meet­ing on First Day morn­ings (though my crazy work sched­ule over the past few months have pre­cluded even this). I’m in no dan­ger of becom­ing the “Catholic Ranter” any­time soon (sorry Julie!) but I do appre­ci­ate the rev­er­ence and sense of pur­pose which Mater Ecclessians bring to wor­ship and even I have cul­ture shock when I go to a _norvus ordo_ mass these days. “Com­men­tary on the Inquirer piece”:http://wdtprs.com/blog/2007/07/philadelphia-inquirer-on-mater-ecclesiae-in-camden-nj/ cour­tesy Father Zuhls­dorf. That blog and the “Closed Cafeteria”:http://closedcafeteria.blogspot.com/ are favorites around here. Here’s a “few pictures”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/martin_kelley/tags/materecclesiae/ of us at the church fol­low­ing bap­tisms.
PS: I wish the Catholic Church as a whole were more open-minded when it comes to LGBT issues. That said, the ser­mons on the issue I’ve heard at Mater Eccle­siae have gone out of their way to empha­size char­ity. That said, I’ve occa­sion­ally heard some under the breath com­ments by parish­ioners that weren’t so char­i­ta­ble. Yet another rea­son to stay the Quaker Ranter.
PPS: And please, no com­ments on why the Catholic church is wrong, why Julie left Friends, why the Tri­den­tine Mass is a step back­wards, yada yada yada. I’m post­ing these links to share some­thing of our lives. Thanks.

Aug 22

Making New Factions

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Strangely enough, the Philadel­phia Inquirer has pub­lished a front-page arti­cle on lead­er­ship in Philadel­phia Yearly Meet­ing, “Friends frus­trate some of their flock, Quak­ers bogged down by process, two lead­ers say”. To me it comes off as an extended whine from the for­mer PhYM Gen­eral Sec­re­tary Thomas Jeav­ons. His cri­tiques around Philadel­phia Quaker cul­ture are well-made (and well known among those who have seen his much-forwarded emails) but he doesn’t seem as insight­ful about his own fail­ings as a leader, pri­mar­ily his inabil­ity to forge con­sen­sus and build trust. He fre­quently came off as too ready to bypass rightly-ordered decision-making processes in the name of strong lead­er­ship. The more this hap­pened, the more dis­trust the body felt toward him and the more intractible and politi­cized the sit­u­a­tion became. He was the wrong leader for the wrong time. How is this wor­thy of the front-page news­pa­per status?

The “Mak­ing New Friends” out­reach cam­paign is a cen­tral exam­ple in the arti­cle. It might have been more suc­cess­ful if it had been given more sea­son­ing and if out­sider Friends had been invited to par­tic­i­pate. The cam­paign was kicked off by a sur­vey that con­firmed that the great­est threat to the future of the yearly meet­ing was “our grey­ing mem­ber­ship” and that out­reach cam­paigns “should tar­get young adult seek­ers.” I attended the yearly meet­ing ses­sion where the sur­vey was pre­sented and the cam­paign approved and while every Friend under forty had their hands raised for com­ments, none were rec­og­nized by the clerk. “Mak­ing New Friends” was the per­fect oppor­tu­nity to tap younger Friends but the work seemed designed and under­taken by the usual sus­pects in yearly meeting.

Like a lot of Quaker orga­ni­za­tions, Philadel­phia Yearly Meet­ing has spent the last fif­teen years largely rely­ing on a small pool of estab­lished lead­er­ship. There’s lit­tle atten­tion to lead­er­ship devel­op­ment or tap­ping the large pool of tal­ent that exists out­side of the few dozen insid­ers. This Spring Jeav­ons had an arti­cle in PYM News that talked about younger Friends that were the “future” of PYM and put the cut-off line of youthfulness/relevance at fifty! The recent polit­i­cal bat­tles within PYM seemed to be over who would be included in the insider’s club, while our real prob­lems have been a lack of trans­parency, inclu­sion and patience in our deci­sion mak­ing process.

Philadel­phia Friends cer­tainly have their lead­er­ship and author­ity prob­lems and I under­stand Jeav­ons’ frus­tra­tions. Much of his analy­sis is right. I appre­ci­ated his reg­u­larly col­umn in PYM News, which was often the only place Christ and faith was ever seri­ously dis­cussed. But his approach was too heavy handed and cor­po­rate to fit yearly meet­ing cul­ture and did lit­tle to address the long-term issues that are lap­ping up on the yearly meet­ing doorsteps.

For what it’s worth, I’ve heard some very good things about the just-concluded yearly meet­ing ses­sions. I sus­pect the yearly meet­ing is actu­ally begin­ning a kind of turn-around. That would be welcome.

 

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Jun 21

Biodemocracy Protests

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melee
Pro­test­ers and police scuf­fle at the “Biodemoc­racy Rally”:http://www.biodev.org/ in Philadel­phia. The well-dressed (and hat­ted) peo­ple are the civil affairs police offi­cers. Appar­ently one of them suf­fered a heart attack in the meele and had to be evac­u­ated on stretcher. “See the full photo set here”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/martin_kelley/sets/483452/.
*Update:* The Philadel­phia Inquirer is report­ing that one of the “police offi­cers at the cen­ter of this scuf­fle has died of an appar­ent heart attack”:http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/business/special_packages/bio2005/11949070.htm