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Richard Aregood started at the Daily News as a police reporter and left 29 years later as the editor of the editorial page. He's now the Charles R. Johnson Professor of Journalism at the University of North Dakota.

  Email Richard at yodailynews@gmail.com
Easy to hold, fun to read — hard to kill?
Posted 04/17/2012
ROLFE NEILL WAS the first editor of the Daily News after the sale to Knight Newspapers Inc. more than 40 years ago. A master of promotion and branding, one of his first acts as editor was to demand that the building at Broad and Callowhill streets bear the name of both newspapers above the entrance. Until then, the Daily News was effectively a tenant in its own headquarters – in the Inquirer Building. And it was done. In fact, the message was so clear that the simple block letters of the Daily News logo were visually dominant over the fussy gothic script of the Inquirer’s. It was an affirmation that “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers,” the Daily News stepchildren, had a chance of attracting the creative and financial support of the parent company. At the Daily News, every day since its founding has been another Agincourt fight for survival.
Naked yoga versus future of Philly journalism
Posted 03/19/2012
WHAT I wouldn't give to be writing about the Daily News putting naked yoga on Page One this month. Instead, we're back to the continuous struggle for survival, which is much less fun than naked anything. Last week, even more of the few, the proud, the staffers of the Daily News and the Inquirer were either bought out or laid off as the current management tries to tidy up the books for yet another set of new owners.
Leaving the tower, ivory & otherwise, and watching sales in the sunset - 02/23/2012
ADMITTEDLY, when we called the white building at Broad and Callowhill streets the "Tower of Truth," there was a touch of irony. Reporters are big on irony.
THE DAILY NEWS ISN'T TALK RADIO, AND THAT'S GOOD NEWS FOR YOU - 01/23/2012
NEWSPAPERS and talk radio may as well be in separate universes. Newspapers compete to get a story quickly - and right. Talk radio competes to get angry listeners even more outraged and to confirm their prejudices, perhaps selling some gold-mine stock along the way.
AGREE TO DISAGREE - 12/19/2011
The value of another opinion
ONE OF THE PROUDEST moments in my Daily News career came in the form of simple thank-you notes. It had been announced that I was leaving the paper, called by the siren song of Newark, N.J.
No. 1 MEDIA WRITER - 11/21/2011
Aregood takes on rankings, more
DEPARTMENT stores used to be a big part of the profits of newspapers, so why shouldn't newspapers in straitened circumstances move into a defunct department store?
Journalistic GPS: How to navigate the slants behind the bylines - 10/17/2011
EDITORS, despite what writers say about them, are every journalist's best friends. They save us, as much as they can, from making total fools of ourselves while at the same time making sure we stay grammatical and have facts to back up even our wildest assertions.
Every time you look, there are buyouts and layoffs at newspapers - 09/19/2011
TO PARAPHRASE myriad deejays, the hits just keep on coming. We're not talking about yet another playing of "Stairway to Heaven," or even "Seasons in the Sun," however annoying you might find that prospect. For people who work for newspapers, the last 15 years or so have been an unrelieved and seemingly unending chain of disasters.
Why the Philadelphia Daily News has to change with the times - 08/24/2011
A WHILE back, in a previous lifetime at another newspaper before space for stories was everything, I went to the editor to try to get rid of a remarkably lousy column.
Image vs. reality - 07/18/2011
'PROFESSOR" Bernarr Macfadden started his career as a wrestler, body-builder and promoter of a diet based on carrots, nuts and raw eggs. He made his fortune as a publisher who believed that sexual repression was every bit as dangerous as refined sugar, white bread and coffee. His publications specialized in semi-nudes of body-builders and weirdly sexualized magazines like True Romances and True Confessions.
The humane genius of the late Philadelphia Daily News editor Gil Spencer - 06/27/2011
Gil Spencer, a legendary Daily News editor, died on Friday. See his obituary in the front of the paper.
Getting corrections of Philadelphia Daily News articles correct - 06/20/2011
THIS MAY not come as a surprise to anyone, but newspapers make mistakes. Even though the Daily News has been kind enough let me pontificate here, I made a mistake last time by saying without qualification that the Christian Science Monitor was a tabloid newspaper.
MORE STORIES
The spicy tabloid recipe - 05/16/2011


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