Also this issue: Seeking a Cure City Council members recommend prison health-care reforms days after the administration agrees to investigate alleged neglect. -Gwen Shaffer Rent! One woman's struggle to find a decent place to live. -Daniel Brook Ralph and Ruthie: The Movie Kinky sex, murder and mayhem -- the life of Ruthann Seccio -- may be coming to a movie screen near you. -Brendan McGarvey Variety Club -Mary F. Patel The Bell Curve City Paper's weekly gauge of Philly's Quality of Life

June 13-19, 2002

on media

Soundbites

by Frank Lewis

Word around the Inquirer is that editor Walker Lundy has gone outside for a new managing editor. Sources say Mark Lett, executive editor of The State, a Knight Ridder paper in Columbia, S.C., will take over the post vacated in January by Philip Dixon. Lundy was away at press time and unavailable for comment, but his assistant relayed a message that neither confirmed nor denied the rumor. A call to Lett at The State (wasn’t that the name of a comedy show on MTV?) was not returned.

It works for Catholic schools, so why not newspapers? Photographers at the Inquirer’s Conshohocken bureau held a bake sale recently to “raise a few bucks to buy the suburban photographers the digital cameras they need,” according to an e-mail circulated among staffers. “Buy a brownie, help a photographer!” The sale, which included a guess-the-number-of-jellybeans-in-the-jar contest, raised $41 and change. “The joke was it was enough to buy a Nikon strap,” says a source who requested anonymity.

The real point of the stunt, however, was to call attention to the photographers' frustration with management's perceived indifference to their situation. Unlike their counterparts who operate out of the Inquirer's North Broad Street headquarters, who are outfitted with digital cameras, the Conshohocken shooters have two digitals to share among the 10 of them. They are contractually obligated to provide their own equipment, but the source notes that professional-grade digitals can cost $5,000 and can become "obsolete in a year." Inquirer photographers can use film cameras, but those with digitals can file their work from the field, which saves time. And then there's the pride factor, the source admits; many small papers the Inquirer competes with in the suburbs are shooting only in digital. "We're in the forefront of trying to keep the Inquirer alive," the source says, referring to the widely noted need for the paper to succeed in the 'burbs. When the situation may change is unclear. The source says the photographers have been told they'll get more digital cameras when editor Walker Lundy's suburban coverage plan is released (Lundy was away all week and could not be reached for comment), but adds, "We've heard [that new cameras are coming] a few times already." Also unresolved is what will become of the $41, which has already been banked.

Maureen Walsh, wife of former Inquirer columnist Bill Speers, has a new book out: The Female Power Within: A Guide to Living a Gentler, More Meaningful Life ($22.95, Life Works Books). Walsh wrote the book with Marilyn Graman and Hillary Welles.

City Paper claimed four honors in the Society of Professional Journalists Philadelphia Chapter’s annual editorial competition: first place in the Web site category; third place in two categories, Ongoing News Coverage and Deadline or Spot News Story, for post-Sept. 11 coverage; and third in Business Story for Frank Lewis’ article “Medicine Man,” which examined Phillies manager Larry Bowa’s involvement in the marketing of a questionable health supplement.

Journalists in Jeopardy

“The vast majority of journalists killed in the line of duty during the last decade were murdered in direct reprisal for their reporting, concludes a study by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). This comprehensive analysis of journalists killed between 1992 and 2001 draws attention to the risks that the media take to report the news and highlights a disturbing global trend: Of the 389 journalists killed on the job, only 62, or 16 percent, died in cross fire, while 298, or 77 percent, were targeted for their work. Moreover, CPJ has recorded only 20 cases in which the person or persons who ordered a journalist’s murder have been arrested and prosecuted. That means that in 95 percent of the cases, those who kill journalists do so without suffering any consequences.”

--from the European Journalism Centre’s (www.ejc.nl) daily e-mail; the latest incident occurred on June 2, when a Rio De Janeiro TV journalist was tortured and killed with a sword by a drug lord after the reporter tried to infiltrate a drug-gang-run dance party in a shantytown in northern Rio.