`Philadelphia Inquirer’ Chief To Depart As Media Wrestles With Diversity Challenge

Stan Wischnowski resigned Saturday as the top editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, less than a week after the newspaper apologized for publishing a headline that seemed to mock the Black Lives Matter movement at a time when protests over the death of George Floyd continue to roil U.S. cities.

According to The Inquirer, Wischnowski’s resignation as the fifth executive editor in 10 years is effective June 12. A successor wasn’t named. Wischnowski joined the Inquirer in 2000. Under his leadership, The Inquirer won the Pultizer Prize for public service in 2012 for a series that found that violence in the Philadelphia School District was pervasive and underreported.

The Inquirer came under fire for running a headline “Buildings Matter, Too” on a June 3 op-ed piece by Inga Saffron, the paper’s architecture critic.

A day later, the paper’s top editors apologized to both readers and employees for seeming to suggest an equivalence between buildings and unarmed Black men like Floyd, who have died in police custody.

“While no such comparison was intended,(the) intent is ultimately irrelevant,” the apology said. “An editor’s attempt to capture a columnist’s nuanced argument in a few words went horribly wrong, and the resulting hurt and anger are plain.”

  Saffron, who didn’t write the headline, noted that rioters damaged many buildings of historical importance.

“Hardly any building on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was left unscathed, and two mid-19th century structures just east of Rittenhouse Square were gutted by fire,” the Pulitzer Prize-winner wrote.

Inquirer staff members criticized their management on social media over the headline and in an internal company meeting. More than 40 journalists of color signed an open letter to the paper’s leadership, accusing it of paying lip service to the idea of diversity and inclusion. Dozens stayed home in protest Thursday and, according to one source, will not be docked by management for their actions.

 The Inquirer’s newsroom includes 213 journalists, 57 of whom are journalists of color. Of those 57 journalists, 48 are union members, and nine are managers, according to a spokesman.

“Its newsroom remains largely white in a city that isn’t,” wrote Diane Mastrull, an Inquirer reporter who is also president of the NewsGuilld of Greater Philadelphia, in a statement on the union’s website. “Pay inequity also racial lines remains in the newsroom, a shameful circumstance.”

According to Bill Ross, executive director of the NewsGuild of Greater Philadelphia, the paper’s lack of diversity has long been a source of friction between the union and Inquirer management.  

As Inquirer Columnist Jenice Armstrong noted, the paper came under fire in 1990 for a racially insensitive editorial that argued that Black welfare mothers should be implanted with the contraceptive Norplant to prevent pregnancies.

The New York Times
NYT
took the unusual step of refusing to run an editorial by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) in its Sunday print edition that had already appeared on its website.

Cotton called for the deployment of U.S. troops to quell the protests over the death of Floyd while in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department, a controversial view backed by President Donald Trump.

 At first, Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger and Opinion Editor James Bennett defended publishing Cotton’s article, arguing the newspaper had a duty to showcase views different than its own.

According to a Times story,  many of the paper’s writers and editors criticized the paper’s decision to run Cotton’s piece on social media and during an internal company meeting.

 After taking a second look at the column, Sulzberger came to a different conclusion, arguing it should have never appeared on its website in the first place. 

The Washington Post noted that “Several staffers tweeted a message that became a kind of rallying cry: “Running this puts Black @nytimes staffers in danger.”

The paper outlined its failures in an editor’s note last week, which argues that “the essay fell short of our standards” and that “the editing process was rushed and flawed.” 

For one thing, Bennett never read Cotton’s essay before publication. Perhaps, he might have flagged some of his dubious claims such as “some elites have excused this orgy of violence in the spirit of radical chic, calling it an understandable response to the wrongful death of George Floyd.”  

Cotton also offered no proof that police officers “bore the brunt of the violence” and that the radical left-wing group Antifa was “infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes.”

A spokesperson for the Times didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Finally, Variety Editor in Chief Claudia Eller went on a two-month administrative leave after getting involved in a Twitter fight last week with Piya Sinha-Roy, a former top editor at The Hollywood Reporter. 

The spat was over a column Eller wrote on the difficulties she has faced in diversifying the entertainment industry publication’s newsroom

Sinha-Roy, who is South Asian, wrote, in a Twitter message, that several years ago, she had spoken with Eller and Andrew Wallenstein, a top Variety editor, about the news organization’s lack of writers and editors of color. Eller responded by calling Sinha-Roy “bitter.”  

Media tycoon Roger Penske who owns Variety, Rolling Stone, and Women’s Wear Daily called Eller’s Tweet “plainly unacceptable,” a sentiment shared by Eller in an apology posted on Variety’s website. 

“I can’t apologize enough to those I have let down. I take today’s criticisms of me very seriously,” Eller wrote.. “I just wish I could’ve listened to each of you sooner.” 

Wallenstein referred a request for comment to a spokesperson for Penske, who declined to elaborate further on Penske’s remarks.