ASSOCIATED PRESS: A Philadelphia newspaper founded in 2004 with the goal of providing a conservative voice has suspended publication, the publisher said. The Bulletin couldn’t afford to operate any longer, Publisher Thomas Rice told employees. Rice wouldn’t go into detail Tuesday, but confirmed The Bulletin had “temporarily” suspended publication. Employees were called into a Monday afternoon meeting and told they were being laid off, said John Rossomando, managing editor. The group was told that even though advertising sales were showing some signs of recovery, the newspaper’s costs had proven insurmountable. Rice launched the newspaper with the historic Philadelphia name in 2004 with a commitment to what he said would be “old-school” journalism and an alternative point of view. Its Web site promised unbiased news, fun for kids and “biting, conservative commentary for adults.” MORE
INQUIRER: The newspaper had mainly straightforward coverage of some local issues, but was heavily dominated by wire stories that could be viewed as critical of liberals. Its commentary pages included syndicated columns by Chuck Norris, Oliver North, and Patrick J. Buchanan. MORE
HERB DENENBERG: [T]his shows again the importance of doing something about media bias, which is now way out of control. This is just one of many illustrations of how the biased, dishonest and fraudulent journalism is not merely making it difficult for the public to get the truth, but much worse than that it is so severely distorting the picture of reality that it keeps the American people from understanding what’s going on in the world, and the extent of the danger we’re in. The American people are in danger every minute from international terrorism, from suicide bombings, from 9/11-style slaughter, from the release of a weapon of mass destruction and possibly even the incineration of one of our major cities and loss of life running into the millions. On Tuesday, British officials issued a report finding terrorists attacking a major city with nuclear or biological weapons is “more realistic” than ever. Yet the Obama administration and the mainstream media feed us gobbledygook and double talk about man-caused disaster and overseas contingency operations. On the war on terror, we can’t trust the mainstream media and we can’t trust our government. What’s worse, the language lunacy probably signals further retreat, appeasement and softness on the war on terror — I mean overseas contingency operation. MORE
RELATED: Herb Denenberg is–as he has been for the better part of his 72 years–mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it any more. “I don’t care if they have the whole lost tribe of Israel working at [the Inquirer‘s newsroom at] 400 N. Broad St. I don’t care if there are choirs of angels on every floor of the newsroom. All I care about is what I read in the paper, and that’s what I’m drawing conclusions from,” he says, sitting over Chinese food in Bryn Mawr, his sauteed vegetables and shrimp largely untouched.
Denenberg does not talk with his mouth full and he has been talking more or less nonstop for the last hour. Clearly frustrated that, over the course of lunch, PW has yet to see the light and concede that the Philadelphia Inquirer is a bastion of anti-Semitic bias, he turns up the volume and intensity a few notches. His eyes narrow as he moves his face just inches from that of his interviewer. If there were a meter for righteous indignation, the needle would be buried in the red.
“What I see in the Inquirer is anti-Israeli from A to Z, day in and day out! Headline! Body of the story! Pictures! Captions! Editorials! Op-ed! And you can smell the bias and feel the bias! It stinks and it’s wrong and I wouldn’t get this pissed about it if it wasn’t really bad, and this is really bad!”
The restaurant falls silent. Looking around nervously, Naomi Denenberg, Herb’s wife of 44 years, gently touches her husband’s shoulder, as if to ground him. The effect is instant, and Denenberg pauses and backs away slightly. The look in his eyes is once again friendly and avuncular as he ends his rap on a note of self-deprecating humor. “If nothing else, you know it’s bad when I shell out $2,500 for a full-page ad in the Exponent,” he says with a chuckle. MORE