philly.com watch: Trudy Rubin Overcomes Flight Delay, Poor Dinner Reservations En Route to Afghan Front

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s intrepid foreign affairs expert, Trudy Rubin, overcomes a 12-hour flight delay, an inappropriate seating at a Kandahar restaurant given her rank and a peaceful day in the city. Unfortunately, she does not overcome some really bad writing and some really poor editing.

You will have to find this post. I don’t want to make to provide the URL because could appear that someone really wants to read this junk. Please note that I have changed from tripe because I actually like tripe.

philly.com watch: No Sign of Osama on the Front Page

I am unhappy to report that philly.com leads with a review of a dreadful movie. Nowhere to be found on the first screen are the implications of the death of Osama bin-Laden.

I was in Wilkes Barre, a city that combined with nearby Scranton has nearly half a million people,  for the past three days.

In the breakfast room, everyone looked up at the television screen when anything about OBL came up.

Maybe a few field trips might give the philly.com leaders an indication about what people are interested in. Shoe leather is always better than Google Analytics. Talking to people is what makes for good journalism and good content.

philly.com watch: Osama bin-Laden is Gone

MIA. Sorry, I was testifying in a trial. philly.com doesn’t have an excuse. OBL is gone and his death’s implications are gone in 72 hours. Amazingly bad journalism.

philly.com watch: Phanatic is No. 1

Philly has a lot of things going for it, but but you can add a new one. Forbes has selected the Philly Phanatic as the No. 1 mascot in professional sports.

In a “scientific study” the Phanatic beat out all others for his “awareness, appeal, entertainment value and team identification.” He was No. 2 last year. Congratulations!

allmedia.com watch: Dealmaking in Philly?

I drive by Queen’s Row, an apartment complex on the border between Germantown and East Falls, almost every day. I always wondered why it was such a mess. Now I know.

Kristen Mosbrucker, one of my former students at Temple, dug into the records to find a bunch of financial shenanigans and deals about why the apartment house has been vacant for years. A combination of government loans, unpaid bills and liens have the complex tied up in knots–so much so that a private developer who wants to buy the place apparently cannot get it off the government dole. The taxpayers’ bill so far is more than $2 million.

Read the story, which is all too typical of Philadelphia, at http://bit.ly/gtDFzS Nice work, Kristen!

philly.com watch: Teacher Trying to Raise Money for Harvard

Zac Chase, a 30-year-old Philadelphia teacher, has been accepted to a graduate program at Harvard. Chase may be smart enough to get into the Ivy League, but he doesn’t have the $40,000 he needs to pay the tuition bill. So he’s trying to convince people to “invest” in him by contributing money at http://chasingharvard.chipin.com

The inquirer has a story about his challenge at http://bit.ly/gARxH8

He’s only raised $1,360 so far and needs to get the rest of the money in just over a week.

As an educator, I am amazed at how expensive colleges have become. Temple, where I teach, remains a good bargain, but it still costs more than $11,000 for in-state tuition. I graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1973. I realize that’s a few years ago, but it cost me $558 a year. That would be just over $2,700 a year when adjusted for inflation. Has a college education really improved that much that it costs four times as much? I doubt it.

Let’s all send our nickels and dimes to Zac to put him through Harvard!

philly.com watch: School Violence Solutions Get Short Shrift

The Inquirer provides its solutions on school violence. It is interesting to note that the solutions stories, which appear on Day 6, are about one-third as long as the others on Days 1 through 5, which pummel the School District of Philadelphia in a variety of ways. You can read the stories at http://bit.ly/fjYPaU

Simply put, journalists are a lot better at finding problems than providing solutions. The same might well be said about me and my analysis of philly.com. Guilty as charged!

I don’t see much hope for philly.com and its partners. The choice of lead stories and their emphasis on particular items confuse me to no end. That’s why I work in community journalism, overseeing street-by-street stories at www.philadelphianeighborhoods.com. I think that hyperlocal journalism, as it’s called, has a far better future in remaking journalism than legacy media like those associated with philly.com

I don’t think legacy journalism understands its role in the communities, which are the true basis for good journalism and greater civic participation.

I may return to analyze philly.com in the future, but this is my last day of screeds on a continuing basis of this news organization. I plan to turn my attention to other issues in the news.

allmediawatch.com: Philadelphia Neighborhoods Follows Up on Housing Scam

I am co-director of philadelphianeighborhoods.com, which is a local website in Philadelphia. We cover the neighborhoods that the legacy media really don’t. What was really impressive today was a story we had in Kensington, a neighborhood in North Philly, where a housing scam has occurred that targeted non-English speakers. The reporter, John Titlow, did a great job of reporting the story, which appears at http://bit.ly/ebFHTv. The story focuses on how many people apparently were cheated, including a number of Hispanics. The story also includes the original story on the scam.

The Philadelphia Daily News did a solid investigation in 2009, but the last update was in January. See the story here at http://bit.ly/e1Weaa

I contacted one of our partners, Al Dia, a prominent Hispanic newspaper, which alerted its Hispanic readers to the issue at http://bit.ly/foU7oA

This cooperation and this story are why I became a journalist. I am proud of John, Al Dia and the Temple University Department of Journalism. It was a good day!

philly.com watch: Cape May vs. Criminals

The lead story for much of the day on philly.com has been how Cape May may lose its status at a National Historic Landmark City.

But the key story today is that the City Council passed a law that removes a question about criminal history from an employment application. At the same time as the Inquirer is questioning why records of school violence perps are not made available to all agencies, philly.com doesn’t lead with a significant change in employing criminals. If you do the crime, you pay the time, and there are other consequences.

The message sent by this new law is odd. Sure, criminals should be given a second chance, but it is hardly discriminatory that an employer should know that someone has done time.

Here is the far more important story at http://bit.ly/hMkgJj:

It is interesting that the Donna Reed Miller, who is retiring from her position in the 8th District and may face some legal problems of her own as a result of a housing scandal in Germantown, was the sponsor of the legislation.

philly.com watch: Teachers Disagree About School Violence

Day 4 of the Inquirer’s series includes a survey of teachers and their attitudes toward the level of school violence in Philly. It seems as though the teachers–at least those who responded to a 27-question survey–were divided about a variety of items.

The survey included the following questions and results:

In each of the following areas, do you think your school is doing an excellent, good, only fair, or poor job? Keeping order and discipline in the hallways.

Only fair 29 percent
Poor 28 percent
Good 26 percent
Excellent 17 percent
Don’t know 1 percent

Violence and other disruptive behaviors have been getting worse in my school over the past three years.

Strongly agree 31 percent
Somewhat agree 24 percent
Strongly disagree 18 percent
Somewhat disagree 10 percent
Don’t know 9 percent

Violence and disruption hinder my ability to do my job.

Somewhat agree 28 percent
Strongly agree 27 percent
Strongly disagree 23 percent
Somewhat disagree 13 percent
Neither agree or disagree 8 percent

It would seem that a slight majority of the teachers see school violence as a problem. It would seem if the situation were as out of control as the Inky series seems to indicate, the respondents would be a far larger majority.

The survey included 750 out of 13,000 teachers through the Philadelphia School District, or roughly 6 percent of the total number of teachers.

As part of full disclosure, it should be noted that the survey was done by a professor at Temple University, where I teach. I do not know him.  See the full results at http://bit.ly/e8Xs9x