It's no secret that the news has changed over the last two decades. The days of hard hitting investigative reporting have been traded for revenue generating click-bait and a sensationalized twenty-four hour cycle of entertainment.
Professional journalism still exists, it's just hard to find.
Sophomoric garbage doesn't have a home. Conventional wisdom would assume it's local, but it weasels its way into the big three cable news networks and major urban papers. In Philadelphia, nowhere is the bilge water of tired wannabes more apparent than at our namesake magazine, Philadelphia.
Since the magazine's inception it's struggled with reaching a true cross-section of the city. Haplessly tone deaf, photos meant to represent Philadelphians were often decidedly white amid a city that is anything but. Interviews on the street echoed the magazine's racist undertones and it was, at least until very recently, regarded as a rag thumbed through by wealthy Main Line women waiting for their stylists. Philadelphia Style, a similar publication fills that role. It's consumed with tedious fluff, but it knows what it does and does it well. It doesn't pretend to be more than style and society news.
Philadelphia itself, however, has recently attempted to separate itself from the muck, and the result has been a bumbling mess of lunchroom rants stylized as blogs with seemingly no purpose other than to incite backlash on social media. This interaction, once reserved for Letters to the Editor rarely read and even more rarely responded to, is uncharted territory. Journalists don't really have best practices mapped out for exactly how to react to responses on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Being the public face of a publication on social media does have its responsibilities, however, and a healthy act is to simply not respond in length. As our Commander in Chief can surely attest, though likely loathe to admit, Tweets have a nagging ability to last forever and one late night rant can soil the reputation of everyone in your orbit.
A few years ago, Philadelphia attempted to shed its straight white reputation by hiring one writer who seemed to address its entire checkered past. Ernest Owens, a blogger from Chicago, is a stylish gay black man well versed in a Millennial style of journalism that is advertising gold. However, Owens is the only journalist writing for Philadelphia's G Philly, the magazine's LGBT insert. Found alongside the Philadelphia Gay News and LGBT city guides at local gay bars, G Philly used to be just another community entertainment guide. Its Man Crush Monday and Woman Crush Wednesday featured charming stories about locals in the LGBT community. It wasn't a standout leaflet but it was something to browse at the bar while waiting for a friend.
Ernest Owens has transformed G Philly into something else entirely, and despite some initially good intentions, he's made G Philly his personal manifesto against Philadelphia's own Gayborhood. There is no question that racism is alive and well in Philadelphia's LGBT community. In a city gentrifying fast, racism abounds. Perhaps it stands out so starkly in the Gayborhood because, as a marginalized community, we should be better than most and hold ourselves to a higher standard than the demographics of Old City or Northern Liberties.
It's truly unfortunate that a community so familiar with bigotry is riddled with amplified prejudice from within. It doesn't take particularly high level thinking to understand why this is, even why it seems to be on the rise. The LGBT community isn't a racial, ethnic, or religious minority. We're raised by everyone everywhere, and we join the community when we come out, long after we've been ingrained with whatever preconceptions our parents and native communities fed us. Additionally, younger generations not raised amid the struggle and strife of those twenty or thirty years ago may not be as sympathetic to the very notion of prejudice itself.
Owens speaks from this mantra, an enhanced expectation for unrealistic idealism blind to anyone born before 1982. He fixates on incidents to the point of obsession and his writing reflects the narcissism of a man who views the world through a tunnel, unwilling to relent when he's proven wrong. Two decades ago, journalists were swilling bourbon and smoking cigars at their desk, slamming phones when they didn't land the scoop first. They'd be the last to let a challenge go unaddressed or burn a bridge. Contacts were everything, even when they were monsters. Today, writers like Owens shut down when challenged, blocking Twitter users and doubling down on falsehoods instead of shifting narratives. He has no interest in the truth, or newsworthiness, only justifying his preconceptions by any means necessary.
No adherent to his personally crafted end is beneath him.
Throughout his posts, he rarely cites those he quotes. More often or not, those he interviews are anonymous, sometimes the anonymity isn't even noted. Quotes supporting his arguments routinely ring with the same speaking style of Owens, frequently too convenient to be believable. It's not a stretch to imagine he simply makes up lines to support his own conclusions. In an absence of journalistic ethics - it's not as though Philadelphia is logging the identity of those anonymously interviewed - there's no reason to believe Owens isn't a charlatan.
His long time fixation has been on the Gayborhood nightclub, iCandy. He had a legitimate beef with the club, as should everyone. When owner Darryl DePiano surfaced on YouTube repeatedly dropping the n-bomb, the Gayborhood erupted. Stonewall kickballers were taping over the iCandy logo on the back of their uniforms, protests were held, a boycott ensued. Perhaps it would have been best for everyone if DePiano had sold iCandy before the hostility had time to marinate. Instead, he made a donation to the Attic Youth Center on behalf of a black author, who Owens failed to mention by name in his blog about the entire fiasco. Ironically, in the very same article, Owens chastises DePiano for failing to remember the author's name.
It was a shoddy attempt at reconciliation. The $300 donation is chump change to a nightclub owner trying to make amends to a community that had long patronized his venue. Nevertheless, Owens' continued rampage against the venue has taken a valid point of racism and raised it with charges against its performers and employees. An Instagram account @icandynightclubisracist surfaced three days ago, and considering its profile and four of its first posts link back to Owens' articles at Philadelphia, it's easy to guess who's behind the account. If Owens isn't, he certainly inspired it.
In it, the account slanders local drag queens, referring to one as an Uncle Tom. These are community members who eke out a living as artists, bartenders, and servers; good people still persecuted by homophobia who deserve praise for their commitment to low wage performances, not more shame by some anonymous huckster. Were this Owens' known account, such accusations would certainly be grounds for dismissal, perhaps even legal action. But it doesn't really matter who owns the account because it reeks of the ire he wrought with the digital pages of Philadelphia, where he incited more racism and hate by conflating his ego with the noble attempt to right a wrong. It's sad when popular opinion begins to pity racists for more than the shallow scum that they are, when publicly shaming people like DePiano makes anyone feel sorry for him. Yet this is the community that Owens - who blazes on against philanthropic organizations like the Mazzoni Center - is trying to create for all of us who just want to do better.
At this point, Philadelphia is likely regretting its hire. Not only have they allowed Owens to run G Philly as his personal blog, they are aiding in the undoing of a community that faces enough battles from lingering homophobia and the onslaught of gentrification. However, the magazine is also in a position where, to fire Owens, would mean a return to its nefarious straightwashing and whitewashing, all under the pretext of cutting ties with the one gay black man they have on staff. It wouldn't look good, and Owens undoubtedly known this. He's placed himself in the perfect position: a well known rabble rouser with a robust following on social media. To let him go means his obsession would shift from iCandy to his employer, and likely the collapse of the magazine.
The growing pains of social media and the redefinition of news are beginning to wear thin. Writers like Owens generate a lot of clicks, comments, shares, and revenue. But smart news outlets need to begin differentiating between savvy social media personalities and megalomanics. Unfortunately, in this realm the two go hand in hand. The most sought after "influencers" are also the most arrogant and unhinged. The future for Philadelphia looks grim, but not so for the Gayborhood under Ernest Owen's unsubstantiated critique. He's never allowed himself to become part of Philadelphia's LGBT community. He writes of the Gayborhood and its storied streets from the vantage point of an outsider. G Philly was never the Gayborhood's letter of record, but it has no hope of sustaining itself even as a door side rag. For all our troubles, we are a tight community, and Owens has only allowed himself to be a visitor even on his best day. At his worst, he's ranting about a movie he refuses to watch, a toddler spitting out his first spoonful of green beans. We've persevered through much more, and right now our biggest threat is gentrification, not some blogger with a Jesus complex. In the words of Mother Ru and every hardworking queen in the Gayborhood, "sashay away."
