 |
|
|
|
|
A NOTE TO THE READER
by The EDITORS
January 2002
Put down this newspaper and look around. The city lives. Philadelphia is so much more than newsworthy, it is worthy whether any journalist pays attention to it or not. Rusting behind the brightly painted placards, whispered between the breathless platitudes of the keynote teleprompter, in the alleys and the sewers and the tombs, underneath a blanket of dead and dying newspapers, beats the heart of the real Philadelphia. We mean the facts and fabric of everyday life.
A few media conglomerates like AOL/Time Warner, Knight-Ridder, and Gannett are buying up larger and larger shares of what we read and watch. Less than one out of every five American newspapers remains under independent ownership. The people in charge have little virtue and even less imagination. They give us much cause to be cynical about public life. But there is a second Philadelphia that has nothing to do with these corrupt figures, and it needs a public life and a voice of its own.
For now, let us say that we are dissatisfied with modern life. We sense the germs of discovery, enlightenment and revolution lying dormant within us, the same germs that inferred the secret of the lightning bolt and cast off the yoke of empire. We want to create a frame where things are better, be that a chair, a photograph, a canvas, a song, or a newspaper.
We spend our days searching for material to fill that frame, to build a city we'd be proud to inhabit. In the midst of office buildings, billboards, and roving packs of identical people, we see only the cobblestones beneath our feet and the bridges above our heads.
To you — the second Philadelphia and the second America — we dedicate these humble pages, to let you know that you are not alone. Our streets are filled with secret artists, poets and scholars. Each is unknowingly collaborating on a much larger project, a constellation so large that no single view can encompass all of its points. We want to connect the dots. In your hand is the pen.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
