Alternative Journalism, Indeed

A classic Philadelphia leftist newsweekly shocks the city by moving rightward.

Thom Nickels October 12, 2020

Philadelphia Weekly, one of the city’s most venerable leftist “alternative” newsweeklies, has rocked the local journalism scene with its announcement that, starting next year, it will provide Philly readers with a different kind of alternative: it will change its editorial outlook from hard-liberal to conservative. The news that PW’s chairman and publisher, Dan McDonough, Jr., was doing a 180-degree reversal of its editorial direction struck most Philadelphians as a fantasy straight out of The Onion. I received several emails from fellow journalists, asking, “Is this real?”

Philadelphia’s once-plentiful field of newsweeklies has shrunk in recent years. In the 1970s, there was The Distant Drummer, the city’s only alternative newspaper, which featured writers like Timothy Leary and Ira Einhorn, the self-proclaimed countercultural guru who achieved notoriety after murdering girlfriend Holly Maddux and stuffing her body in a trunk in his West Philadelphia apartment.

The Welcomat began as a forum for diverse viewpoints in 1971. Readers engaged in editorial wars in the Letters to the Editor section, especially during the AIDS epidemic, when ACT UP raided the paper’s offices and demanded that the freelancer responsible for a “bigoted” article be fired. The paper balanced conservative and liberal views. Readers understood and accepted that they would occasionally be “offended.” This arrangement came to an abrupt halt when a new editor, on the job for barely a week, got the boot. I worked as a staffer at the time and recall the dazed reactions in the newsroom. Philadelphia’s most famous newsweekly then acquired a new name: The Philadelphia Weekly............To Read More....

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