The Philadelphia Inquirer has long been considered our city’s paper of record: A media outlet that many around the city, state, nation, and world have expected to accurately reflect and consider the voices of those among us. But for more than two years, the Philadelphia Inquirer has stood for something else: negligent, irresponsible, and harmful leadership that has avoided accountability and has continued to make failed promises to the local affinity DEI organizations they’ve once agreed to work with in good faith. This is damaging to the paper’s credibility. And it is damaging to all Philadelphians, especially communities of color, who expect our city’s paper of record to consider them to cover and represent them, and their advocacy groups, fairly and equitably.  

It is disheartening that the Inquirer executive leadership, namely Publisher & CEO Lisa Hughes and Editor and Senior VP Gabe Escobar, would continue to avoid meeting with local DEI media organizations such as the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and the Philadelphia chapter of the Asian American Journalist Association, at a time when their newsroom continues to struggle with diversity coverage, hiring, and community outreach. While they have made some recent steps toward improvement, such progress has been inconsistent and not as promising given the lack of engagement with the aforementioned affinity groups better tasked with advising and informing such efforts.

MEDIA ADVOCACY GROUPS AND OUR DEI ALLIES HAVE HAD ENOUGH AND WE DEMAND THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER TAKE ACTION.

Year after year, email after email, meeting request after meeting request, open letter after open letter, public call out after public call out, month after month, day after day, phone call after phone call, zoom call after zoom call,  we have tried to educate you and your colleagues. We have sent emails, made calls, met with Inquirer staffers, met with Lenfest Institute board members, met with the past and current Inquirer VP of DEI, gave thumbs-down awards to raise awareness of the issue, and after more than two years of trying, we have not been able to have a follow-up meeting with Hughes and Escobar to formally discuss why our initial DEI pledges were not met. It is clear that our behind-the-scenes outreach has had zero impact. What has had an impact, however, is your consistent railroading of our local affinity group’s ability to enact real change at your publication. 

The Philadelphia Inquirer decided to spend more time forming DEI efforts that have lacked collective input from affinity groups and the community at large.

Two years ago, on March 15, 2021, the publication agreed in a joint statement with the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists (PABJ) that they would launch a Community Advisory Council that would include input from diverse non-employees from The Philadelphia Inquirer. They have not gone through with this plan and have yet to formally inform our organization directly why they haven’t.

Two years ago, the Inquirer agreed to launch a new apprenticeship program for early-career Black and brown journalists with PABJ to help create a better pipeline of diverse representation at their publication. They have also failed to act on this effort as well and have not formally informed PABJ why they haven’t decided to move forward.

Two years ago, the Inquirer pledged to have continued dialogue on upcoming DEI programs and initiatives that both them and PABJ will work together to achieve. That still has clearly not been the case. In fact, since that now-neglected joint agreement – PABJ leadership has been consistently denied a meeting with the Inquirer’s senior leadership to discuss this matter. Several local DEI affinity organizations in Philadelphia have also raised similar concerns within their respective calls for accountability.  

This is not the way any organization of the free press should treat DEI organizations seeking answers, transparency, inclusion – and more importantly, the truth. For years, promises were made by the Inquirer to affinity groups that weren’t kept. At this critical time in our nation’s history, we cannot continue to see diverse communities be neglected by those who seek to cover us fairly and equitably. 

We could spend hours listing every problematic and racially offensive action that the Inquirer has done in recent memory, but we would rather organize the community at large to take action and demand better. Here are our demands for the Philadelphia Inquirer:

1. DO: Inquirer Executive Leadership Must Meet with Local DEI Affinity Leaders from PABJ, NAHJ Philly, AAJA Philly Immediately. If there is to be any true resolution to any of these problems, it’s about damn time the Philadelphia Inquirer Leadership, namely Hughes and Escobar, take a meeting with the Presidents of PABJ, NAHJ Philly, and AAJA Philly to discuss how they plan to address these growing concerns. They can no longer work in silos, but with us directly. There’s nothing that can be done on behalf of media advocacy pertaining to diverse communities without the respective inclusion and input of local affinity DEI media groups.
   Timing: Immediately.

2. STOP: Gaslighting the concerns of Local DEI Affinity Groups and Shifting Accountability Elsewhere. After having meetings with members of the Lenfest Institute Board of Directors, Inquirer staffers, and other associated entities connected to the Philadelphia Inquirer – we’ve realized that there’s no way to truly go about this without actually having a meeting with the senior leadership of the Inquirer. After having a meeting with the newly hired VP of DEI at the Inquirer, it’s become clear that there will be no progress without removing all of the barriers of access to direct senior leadership. Hughes and Escobar should stop redirecting our concerns onto others and directly address them with the afflicted DEI affinity groups they previously made promises to.
   Timing: Immediately.

3. BE: Open and receptive to hearing feedback from Local DEI Affinity Groups and Community Groups. At this point, tone-policing and enforcing rigid respectability politics onto diverse community leaders seeking to speak truth to power is a microaggression within itself. No matter how many ways we attempted to engage the Inquirer – via open letter, email, meeting request, public call out on social media – none of these actions were successful. This is disappointing because it reinforces the double standards that journalists of color have to work twice as hard to get only a subpar response from those in power who owe it to us even more.
   Timing: Immediately.

For those of us who truly respect the Philadelphia Inquirer’s impact for so many decades, it is appalling to see how they have continued to deflect, ignore, and avoid the constant concerns of local DEI affinity groups for so long. We won’t stand for the Inquirer’s leadership continuing to deny DEI affinity groups the opportunity to meet with them to request transparency and accountability. We demand civic discourse, representation, coverage, and equity – we demand that the Inquirer meet with these respective leaders to address these ongoing issues and honor the promises they’ve proposed on behalf of our diverse community.