I ran across a photo if the masthead of The Philadelphia Inquirer from February 25, 1953, and noticed the ‘taglines’ that it used: “Public Ledger” and “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”. By Public ledger, the Inquirer was setting itself up as Philadelphia’s newspaper of record, which Wikipedia defines as “a major newspaper with large circulation whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered authoritative.” That Wikipedia article named four newspapers of record for the United States: The New York Times (Founded 1851), The Washington Post (1877), The Los Angeles Times (1881) and The Wall Street Journal (1889). First printed on Monday, Jun1 1, 1829, the then Pennsylvania Inquirer is older than any of them. “An editorial in the first issue of The Pennsylvania Inquirer promised that the paper would be devoted to the right of a minority to voice their opinion and ‘the maintenance of the rights and liberties of the people, equally against the abuses as the usurpation of power.’”

Boy has that changed! As has happened to other great newspapers, the newsroom of the Inquirer was captured by the young #woke, who forced the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline Buildings Matter, Too.

“Devoted to the right of a minority to voice their opinion”? Yeah, that failed, too, as the Inquirer closed comments on the majority of its articles, stating that:

Commenting on Inquirer.com was long ago hijacked by a small group of trolls who traffic in racism, misogyny, and homophobia. This group comprises a tiny fraction of the Inquirer.com audience. But its impact is disproportionate and enduring.

Really? How do they know? How can they be sure that these views do not represent more than a “tiny fraction” of their audience? Have they really done the research, or was it just that the #woke didn’t like the idea that the riff-raff could express their opinions? “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”? No, the Inquirer has now become a non-profit newspaper for the left.

There’s a reason I’ve called it The Philadelphia Enquirer, mocking its name by using the same spelling as the National Enquirer.^[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

Before I retired, I used to pick up a copy of the Inquirer at the Turkey Hill in downtown Jim Thorpe, on my way to the plant. I read it, as did my drivers, though they sometimes said I should have picked up the Allentown Morning Call instead, being somewhat closer to local news. I read a lot of stories in the Inquirer, about the killings of Philadelphia police officers, I noted how the newspaper didn’t really care much about the murders of young black men in the city, but has the killing of cute little white girl Rian Thal splashed through the paper for days.^[2]That site search for Rian Thal returned 3,128 results! Think the Inquirer was obsessed much, or were they just printing what the editors thought their readers wanted to see?

So, I’m sad to see what the Inquirer has become. They write about “gun crime” as though an inanimate object somehow jumps up and shoot people all by itself, because it’s just too politically incorrect to note that that “gun violence” is disproportionately committed by black Philadelphians. The editors have dozens and dozens of articles claiming that #BlackLivesMatter, when it has become obvious, to anyone who reads the newspaper, that black lives don’t matter, unless they are taken by a white police officer.

Despite the fact that I said I wouldn’t, I finally subscribed to the digital edition of the Inquirer, after Mrs Pico kept telling me to do so rather than try to get copies of stories for free and then have to manually type them into my blog articles. But the paper has gone downhill, even from just ten years ago.