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August 22 , 2007

Reflections on Wawa
By Jennifer

Wawa is a quintessentially Philadelphia phenomenon. A family-owned convenience store that began humbly, it is now a chain of 575 outlets spreading throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. Now Wawa allows you to fuel up your car as well as yourself at the same time — newly built Wawas have morphed into giant gas stations with high-margin snack items, cigarettes and a few groceries available as well. I love the fact that our region has mostly Wawas, not 7-11s, and I even love the silly baby-talk sound of the name. Wawas vary in quality and spiffiness, depending on when they were built, which makes sense, I guess. What doesn’t make sense is that the grittiest, most down-at-the-heels Wawa of them all is the one located in Lima, PA, just one mile north of Red Roof, Wawa’s corporate headquarters on Baltimore Pike in Delaware County. You would think that when Wawa’s president and all his underlings at Red Roof dash out for a doughnut, coffee, hoagie or a pack of Camels, they would get to go to the shiniest, biggest, newest Wawa of them all. Wrong. The only thing the Lima Wawa has going for it, as far as I can tell, is a grill. That’s nice, but if Wawa cares about its corporate image, it will spruce up the store located nearest its headquarters. Now that would be smart marketing for its chain of markets.

And another thing. For a few years now, the Texas ad agency hired to promote this oh-so-Philadelphia regional chain has employed the tag line “Gotta Hava Wawa.” The copywriter probably got a raise, and the focus group members may have politely said they liked it, but a random sampling of friends, relatives and acquaintances reveals that so far, this inane phrase has not caught on. Nobody in the eight country metro area has ever been heard to utter the words “Gotta Hava Wawa.” Everyone still says “We’re out of milk, stop at Wawa” or “Whatta youse want from Wawa?” or “Mom, can I ride my bike to Wawa to get some candy?” Catch phrases catch on organically. Despite the millions spent to hype this one, we don’t wanna hava Wawa. We just want to go to one – preferably a clean, bright, shiny one.

August 22 , 2007

By Jennifer

Here is the coda to the brown recluse spider bite debacle of 2007, detailed in the previous entry. After not hearing from Science editor Trish Wilson, I emailed Editor Bill Marimow and Publisher Brian Tierney, listing my objections to the article and photo. To his great credit, Marimow emailed back within hours, apologizing for my experience, promising to investigate further, and encouraging me to call when he returned from vacation. That same morning, Trish Wilson left a voicemail which said “I’m sorry you’re upset.” Wow. Even my 12-year-old instantly parsed what was wrong with that sentence. Later that day, I took calls from Don Sapatkin, the editor who had worked with Erika Gebel on the story, who spent an hour trying to justify the story, and from Marimow’s top deputy, Vernon Loeb, who offered a new story which would be “fair and balanced.” In my experience, the offer of a new story is exceedingly rare. That told me everything I needed to know. My complaints were valid, the Inquirer had screwed up badly, and reparations were in order.

The next day there was another voicemail from Trish Wilson: “It is not our intention to make our subjects feel bad.” I didn’t return the call. Long story short, which is a way of making a long expression short, I called Marimow the day he returned from vacation and told him I’d like a meeting. He said I should meet with Trish. I countered that I wanted to meet with him. He sighed and hesitated. I waited. He agreed. The next day, we met for 30 minutes, hashing over the article, the secret change of angle, the unfair slant, the hideous photo depicting me, to quote a friend, as a “sorority girl who has been drinking beer in the woods”. He said “What happened was a tragedy, a travesty, at best a comedy of errors. I’m very sorry.” And that was all I wanted. No new article, no guaranteed publication of an outraged letter to the editor (although I appreciated the offers). Discussing the series of unfortunate events with someone in power who actually grasped the truth of the situation – someone who had the maturity and grace to deliver a genuine apology - that was the point. I was grateful for the chance to make clear, to quote Bartlett and Steele, “What Went Wrong”. Bill Marimow and Vernon Loeb have my respect. I wish them luck at the helm of The Inquirer.

July 16, 2007

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Adding Insult to Injury
By Jennifer

Two weeks have gone by since The Philadelphia Inquirer ran its Science section cover story debunking the existence of brown recluse spiders in Pennsylvania http://www.philly.com/inquirer/health_science/daily/20070702_Eight-legged_scapegoat.html
The article featured the story of me and how I ended up in the hospital for two miserable June nights being pumped full of Cipro and Keflex while my pneumonia-plagued roommate, who never spoke a word, hacked away like TB pariah Andrew Speaker on his flight from justice. Two out of three doctors who consulted on my case decided that I had been bitten by a brown recluse spider. I believed them – they’re the diagnosticians, not me.

The Inquirer reporter doing the story (which a reporter friend pitched, by the way, not me) was all sweetness and light every time I spoke to her. What she failed to tell me what that her angle changed from “Why are so many Pennsylvania residents landing in the hospital with necrotic wounds, possibly from brown recluse spider bites?” to “Anyone who says they were bitten by a brown recluse spider in Pennsylvania is a crazy hypochondriacal liar.”

The story was a hatchet job, with cub reporter/summer intern Erika Gebel playing the role of Lizzie Borden. The blurry, blown-up, eyes-closed photo of me was carefully chosen, as any casual student of semiotics would instantly grasp, to telegraph “insanity.” Actually it also made the Inquirer look really bad. As Chris said, “It looks as if The Inquirer issues cell phones to its photographers instead of expensive Canons.” The photographer, David Swanson, later told me that the shot in the paper was intended as a second photo for the jump, if needed. He was taking flattering portraits for the cover (the cover girl ended up being a close up of a brown recluse). I’m guessing any decent photos that made me look remotely intelligent and attractive landed on the cutting room floor.

Amazingly, the reporter APOLOGIZED to me after I sent an email pointing out her egregious lack of journalistic ethics. Erika Gebel admitted she had “made a mistake” and had followed “poor advice” from someone – “I’m not naming names” – in the newsroom who had guided her into lampooning me. Smells like intentional malice – a journalistic no-no of the highest water.

What I have not yet gleaned is whether this instruction was issued simply because I was a convenient victim, or because I’ve angered Philadelphia Inquirer Science Editor Trish Wilson at some point in my career. Calls to Trish Wilson have gone unanswered. Say,that reminds me of a line from the original article: “The two doctors who Reynolds says were sure that the wound was from a brown recluse did not return phone calls last week.” Call me, Trish. I’m waiting to hear your side of the story.

June 12 , 2007

Sopranos Ending

When David Chase chose to cut to three seconds of black at the end of his masterpiece of TV theatre, everyone had the same reaction. Across the country, cries rang out: “Are you sitting on the remote?” and ”Did you hit a button?” and “WTF is happening with my cable?”. And this, fellow TV addicts, may be the bottom-line message of David Chase’s multi-meaning blackout. He was echoing William Shatner’s famous line to conventioneering Trekkies, dressed up like their favorite characters and hiding out from reality: “Get a life.” In this house, we planned our weekend around 9 PM Sunday June 10, sitting down with plates of ziti and glasses of pinot greezh, phone off, glued to the TV, desperate to see what would happen to this fictitious family, while our own children put themselves to bed upstairs. They were forbidden to come downstairs after 9 PM, to which they said “We know, you don’t want us hearing the F word.” Hey, we called “Good night, I love you” up the stars as we rushed to the couch. David Chase made us reflect on what was wrong with that picture. Pay attention to your own families, he’s saying. Let the Sopranos go. What happens to Tony, Carmela, Meadow and AJ matters little, compared to what happens in the real world. Because in reality, the question “Whaddaya gonna do?” is the wrong question. Look where such fatalism got the Sopranos and their crime family. Stop shrugging. Do something. Drop the remote and step away from the TV.

June 1 , 2007

We want to know why WHYY-FM traffic reporter Mary Cantell can’t pronounce the word “Schuylkill.” Shouldn’t the voice of the highly educated, high-income Delaware Valley dwellers sound somewhat intelligent and knowledgeable? Shouldn’t she at least be able to pronounce one of the main rivers and arteries of the region? Instead, Mary slides with “soo-kill.” And now veteran traffic reporter John Butterworth is starting to copy her too, after 20 plus years of correct pronunciation. Say it ain’t so, John. We’d like to Know Whyy radio reporters are slaughtering what should be the “skoo-kil” – is this a deliberate short-cut to save a nanosecond of precious air time? And while we’re at it, we’d also like to Know Whyy the annoyingly helium-voiced Robin Bloom gets so much airtime.

May 9, 2007

Inquirer Observations

Recently, our grand old dame of a daily newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, has behaved in a rather unseemly fashion. First, we noticed a new photo credit: istockphoto.com. Purchasing stock images at the Dollar Store of online photography will certainly save you some money, but the price, in terms of reputation, is awfully steep. Isn’t there a full stable on photographers on staff who are perfectly capable of shooting blurry people racing through an airport? Wonder how our friends in the photo department like the idea of having their jobs outsourced to Mr. Internets.

Second, it’s great that the Inquirer’s circulation is up. Really, we are excited too, Brian. But printing a four-page special edition playing off the phrase “when pigs fly” was a bit over the top. There was only enough joke material to sustain one page, maybe two. Since nobody bought advertising, the Inquirer’s writers became increasingly desperate to play off the theme as they struggled to fill four pages, which ended up looking like a feeble imitation of The Onion (which knows when to stop – sometimes after just a headline). Doesn’t that excess diminish the apparent value of ad space in the Inky? To top it off, the whole thing was inserted again, in a Sunday edition (we know, to impress non-subscribers buying single copies at Wawa and Acme). Perhaps the first time in history a dead horse has been flogged by flying pigs.

April 30, 2007

As writers/editors/PR people, we can’t help proofreading every thing we read, even if it’s not for work. Menus. Historic markers. Signs in shop windows. We wish we were not afflicted with this tendency, but there’s nothing we can do to reverse it. Sometimes mistakes are so egregious or hilarious, they become the stuff of legend.

Like this one found on a flyer sent home by our local elementary school, which contains both an unwittingly absurd threat and a commentary on suburban one-ups-manship.

“Every year during the first week of May, we ask the children to bring in a flower or two from their yards to create a special bouquet for the teacher. A vase is provided for each class. Please do not send your child in with more than one or two flowers. Often the most generous children end up sitting in a paper cup in the back of the room by themselves.”