A Million Stories

All the news we care to print.

by Jeffrey C. Billman and Holly Otterbein

Evan M. Lopez

It's bad enough that yogurt and laundry-detergent advertisers target those of us at A Million Stories who, uh, have a vagina. But do the soulless leeches (no offense, ad department!) really have to go after us because we're from Philadelphia and have a slight dietary problem, too?

Last week, we received — and actually read! — an e-mail reading thusly: "XIPWIRE is a new mobile payment (text-to-pay) service that allows businesses and consumers to pay for everything from cheesesteaks to coffee via instant text message." Oh, lord — we're surprised they didn't call them Philadelphia cheesesteaks.

We'll forgive XIPWIRE for its transgression — and the fact that the company is as cap-happy as our mom on the Interwebs — because it's based in Philly. Plus, XIPWIRE may be onto something. Here's how it works: If you and your buddy Bob sign up for the program, you can text "ZIP Bob 20" to him, and $20 will go to his account from yours. No credit cards, no cash, no ATMs. (Caution: Do not allow Bob unfettered access to your phone.) The same goes for businesses that have joined — which so far include Mémé, Capogiro and Raven Lounge, to name a few.

A handful of other companies, like PayPal, VeriFone and Square, have launched cell phone payment services, but XIPWIRE appears to be the first to provide it through text messages.

"It's something we think college-aged kids who are tech-savvy will like," says Sharif Alexandre, XIPWIRE's founder. "You know, for when they have an immediate need for cash, they're out at night and don't want to carry a wallet, or they need to call mom to get money for lunch that very day."

So what you're saying is, it's for sloshed 21-year-olds who leave their wallets at Nodding Head every fucking time they go out?

We'll drink/text to that.

As the Webcam turns

When Ballard Spahr LLP released its report on Lower Merion School District's covert laptop-tracking program earlier this week, there was really only one question: Were school administrators grossburgers who spied on teenagers, or were they just stupid employees who let the program take thousands of photographs, sometimes in students' homes?

Answer: "The vast majority of the images — 87 percent — recovered resulted from the failure to deactivate [the program] on 12 laptops after they had been found. We found no evidence that the feature was used to 'spy' on students."

(Bonus: Though there were "a number of photographs of males without shirts," there was no "nudity." Lucky them.)

So they're nincompoops; that doesn't means LMSD is off the hook. The report found that the superintendent, assistant superintendent, principals and assistant principals hadn't the faintest idea how the tracking program worked, let alone that it could take some 30,564 (!) Webcam pics, because the information services personnel "withheld information" and "were not forthcoming."

Also, when people raised concerns about the program, they were roundly ignored. In 2008 — a year before Blake Robbins was photographed in his own home, and a giant headache of a lawsuit ensued — a student intern e-mailed LMSD's then-technology administrator, Virginia DiMedio, saying it was "appalling" that the district didn't inform students or teachers about the tracking program.

DiMedio wrote back: "There is absolutely no way that the District tech people are going to monitor students at home. There is no plan, no staff, no desire and I believe no technical way to do that . ... I suggest you take a breath and relax."

Yeah. Relax. They've totally got this.

Dept. of Navel-Gazing

By: Evan M. Lopez (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

We know that there's nothing you love more than journalists writing about other journalists. Which is why, despite the copious ink that has been spilled in the last week on the $139 million auction sale of Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, the parent company of both the Inquirer and the Daily News, to a group of lenders headed by New York investment firm Angelo, Gordon & Co., we feel compelled to weigh in.

Yes, publisher and "Keep It Local" champion Brian Tierney can be a sanctimonious prick, but in his defense, while other newspapers the country over were making draconian cuts, Tierney's DN won a Pulitzer Prize for its remarkable series on crooked cops, and the Inky's investigative work on this city's wretched justice and property appraisal systems has been second to none. And for all of the ankle-biting that we do, let's be honest: This city needs robust, vibrant, hard-hitting print operations.

Sure, that the Inky allows John Yoo's torture porn (note to area musicians: John Yoo's Torture Porn should totally be a band name) to appear on its op-ed pages can be infuriating, as is Stu Bykofsky's get-off-my-lawn shtick in the DN. But those are small beefs. Given the tremendous work that the papers' journalists do, it's a little scary that the dudes writing the checks will now be hedge-fund managers .

There's some guarded optimism, as voiced by Inky business reporter Joe DiStefano, who opined that the higher-than-expected auction price equaled a "vote of confidence" in the papers' futures. The fact that the new owners have tapped former Inky and DN publisher Robert J. Hall as chief operating officer augers well, as does the hiring of former Newsweek publisher Gregory J. Osberg as publisher and CEO. "I did not come here just to cut costs," Osberg told the paper. "The plan is for growth."

Let's hope. But let's also acknowledge reality: These new owners are businessmen, and their commitment to journalism will only go so far. They've already floated the idea of canning half of the papers' 3,200 staffers . Indeed, after this same ownership group bought a stake in the Minnesota Star Tribune after it emerged from bankruptcy last year, that paper slashed 10 percent of its work force.

These dramas often have familiar scripts: When big-stakes moneymen get involved in newspapers, journalism takes a backseat to the bottom line. To wit: Sam Zell, the real-estate tycoon who bought Tribune Co. in 2007 and quickly eviscerated the reputations of some of Tribune's imprints, all the while flaunting his contempt for news production. In January 2008, for instance, Zell visited the Orlando Sentinel's newsroom for a pep talk; a photographer asked about the possible softening of the paper's news coverage. Zell responded with a sermon on journalistic "arrogance" and proclaiming that if readers wanted stories about puppies, then that's what they're going to get, and capped it off with a gruff "fuck you." (Incidentally, Angelo, Gordon & Co. is also involved in Tribune Co.'s efforts to emerge from its Zell-driven bankruptcy.)

Of course, the people that run newspapers want to make money. But the best papers are those that are invested in their communities — those that give a shit — and that attitude necessarily comes from the top. As Woodrow Wilson once said, "Pitiless publicity is the sovereign cure for ills of government." In a town whose government has as many ills as Philadelphia, we need all the pitiless publicity we can get. Hopefully, the new owners of the city's dailies take that to heart.

This week's report by Jeffrey C. Billman and Holly Otterbein. E-mail us at amillionstories@citypaper.net.