Philadelphia Inquirer Editor Canned for Not Understanding Internet
Philadelphia Inquirer editor Bill Marimow—a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who's led the paper since 2006—is being demoted back to reporter by the paper's new owners. The reason? The internet.
The company's new management told Marimow that despite his national reputation as an outstanding print journalist, he did not have the background in digital media necessary to lead the paper going forward.
Interesting—that very well may be true, and it's probably true for a lot of editors of big-city newspapers, and their papers will probably suffer for it until they're replaced by more savvy management from a younger generation, if they survive that long. In that sense (assuming the appraisal of Marimow's talent is accurate), the new owners should be applauded for replacing him. None of that's a knock on Marimow's journalism skills, which are great, according to just about everyone except David Simon, who named a nasty character in The Wire after Marimow, who was Simon's editor in Baltimore. (Simon thought Marimow was an awards-chasing, out-of-touch jerk. Like the editor he modeled on him, in the last season.)