CRYBULLY MOB COLLECTS SCALP: Stan Wischnowski to resign as The Philadelphia Inquirer’s top editor.

Wischnowski, 58, led the paper over two turbulent periods in recent years, driving it, its sister paper, the Daily News and its website, Inquirer.com, to reshape themselves as the digital age transformed the news business. He was also key in the creation of Spotlight PA, a new multi-reporter team to provide news outlets across Pennsylvania with investigative coverage of state government. He also was in charge in 2012 when the Inquirer won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for an in-depth investigation into violence within Philadelphia schools.

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It was the placement of an insensitive headline over Inga Saffron’s column in the Tuesday newspaper that may have set the stage for Wischnowski’s departure. He joined the two other top editors in signing an apology to readers and staff, characterizing the headline, “Buildings Matter, Too” as “deeply offensive” and apologizing for it. The column had explored the destruction of buildings amid the looting that accompanied some of the nationwide protest over police violence.

Even before the headline was published, Wischnowski and other editors had scheduled a staff-wide Zoom meeting to discuss race at the Inquirer and the pressures in particular faced by journalists of color.

Wischnowski, low-key and measured, as is his personality, told staffers on Wednesday that the paper had made strides in diversifying its 213-member newsroom, boosting minority representation to 27 percent of the editorial workforce, about a doubling in four years. He promised more such hires.

The session turned intense and emotional. Some journalists could be seen in tears in their Zoom frames. Critics, black and white, denounced the pace of change at the paper, sharply criticizing both coverage and the racial and gender mix of the staff. Several journalists pointed out that the newspaper could muster only one male African American reporter to cover the protests and police response convulsing a city that is majority minority.

Hours after the wrenching Zoom session, about 50 journalists of color signed an open letter calling for faster changes at the paper. The following day, most of the minority staff took the day off from work in protest.

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In 2010, when new, hedge-fund owners acquired the Inquirer, he became the paper’s fifth editor in 10 years, replacing Bill Marimow.

It was during that period when the paper’s Assault on Learning series was published.

“The future of any great American city depends on providing a safe environment in which young people can learn,” he told a reporter for a profile for his old hometown paper, in Illinois. “Our series exposed in graphic and painstaking detail the ways in which we are failing this generation.”

Ironically, what Jonathan Haidt and Insta-co-blogger Greg Lukianoff call “safetyism” doomed Wischnowski’s latest stint at the Philadelphia Inquirer, the same trend that caused similar meltdowns at the New York Times over Sen. Tom Cotton’s op-ed and New York magazine this past week over Andrew Sullivan’s column on the New York rioters and looters.

Timeswoman Bari Weiss’ thoughts on the meltdown at her paper also apply to Wischnowski leaving the Inquirer:

As former newspaper man Rod Dreher writes, “Every now and then, a young person will ask me what advice I have for someone who is thinking about becoming a journalist. My advice: don’t do it. If you are an honest person — whether you’re liberal, conservative, or somewhere in between — you are going to live in constant fear of inadvertently causing a job-ending offense. You will end up a nervous wreck, or you will end up as a conformist drone, or you will end up jobless.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Actually, you have a very good chance of ending up all three.

BLUE ON BLUE: LA Mayor Garcetti Calls His Cops ‘Killers.’ The ‘Killers’ Just Sent a Reply to the ‘Unstable’ Mayor.

ALSO, ABOLISH QUALIFIED IMMUNITY NOT ONLY FOR POLICE, BUT FOR ALL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS: Make cops carry liability insurance: The private sector knows how to spread risks, and costs.

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THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: WHO reverses position on face masks as coronavirus cases climb.

BRENDAN O’NEILL: I did not kill George Floyd. The attempt to hold all whites responsible for the death of Floyd shows what a dead-end woke politics is.

As with pretty much all racial politics, it’s never about solving a problem or making things better or helping people get along.

WELL, YES: Public Health Experts Have Undermined Their Own Case for the COVID-19 Lockdowns: Police violence is a metaphorical disease. Coronavirus is a literal disease.

Many people all over the country were prevented from properly mourning lost loved ones because policymakers and health officials limited public funerals to just 10 people. For months, public health officials urged people to stay inside and avoid gathering in large groups; at their behest, governments closed American businesses, discouraged non-essential travel, and demanded that we resist the basic human instinct to seek out companionship, all because COVID-19 could hurt us even if we were being careful, even if we were going to a funeral rather than a nightclub. All of us were asked to suffer a great deal of second-order misery for the greater good, and many of us complied with these orders because we were told that failing to slow the spread of COVID-19 would be far worse than whatever economic impact we would suffer as a result of bringing life to a complete standstill. . . .

People who failed to follow social distancing orders have faced harsh criticism and even formal sanction for violating these public health guidelines. To take just one extreme example, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio threatened to use law enforcement to break up a Jewish funeral.

After saying no to so many things, a significant number of public health experts have determined that massive protests of police brutality are an exception to the rules of COVID-19 mitigation. Yes, these protests are outdoors, and yes, these experts have encouraged protesters to wear masks and observe six feet of social distance. But if you watch actual footage of protests—even the ones where cops are behaving badly themselves—you will see crowds that are larger and more densely packed than the public beaches and parks that many mayors and governors have heavily restricted. Every signatory to the letter above may not have called for those restrictions, but they also didn’t take to a public forum to declare them relatively safe under certain conditions.

“For many public health experts who have spent weeks advising policymakers and the public on how to reduce their risk of getting or inadvertently spreading the coronavirus, the mass demonstrations have forced a shift in perspective,” The New York Times tells us.

But they could have easily kept the same perspective: Going out is dangerous, here’s how to best protect yourself. The added well, this cause is important, though, makes the previous guidance look rather suspect.

Well, yes. It suggests that they weigh politics — the right sort of politics, that is — ahead of public health. And it suggests that because they do.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The Collapse of Social Distancing and Establishment Authority.

AMERICAN CITIES TAKE DOUBLE-BARRELED HIT; HOW WILL THEY LOOK IN THE FUTURE?

Over at Ed Driscoll.com, I take a deep-dive, quoting numerous articles, on the future of the American city — or the lack thereof, post-CCP virus and the week and a half (so far) of riots and looting.

(Bumped.)

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE. I Must Object: Glenn Loury’s Rebuttal to Brown Univ.’s Letter Decrying Pervasive Racism in U.S.

Related: Almost Half Of Universities May Be Gone In 5 To 10 Years, Professor Admits.

THE WOKE BEAST CANNOT BE APPEASED: Woke Employees at Woke Ohio Taco Joint Walk Off Job After Refusing to Fill Order for Cops.

PLUS, IT’S IMMUNE TO MILLENNIAL CARJACKERS: The Civic Si only comes with a manual transmission, which may turn off some buyers, but for those in the know it’s an incredible fun-to-drive value.

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CHANGE: University of Minnesota president to recommend in-person classes resume this fall.

A LONELY VOICE OF SANITY IN ACADEMIA: I Must Object. A rebuttal from Glenn Loury, the Brown University economist, to his university’s letter on racism in the United States: “The roster of Brown’s ‘leaders’ who signed this manifesto in lockstep remind me of a Soviet Politburo making some party-line declaration.”

JUNE 6, 1944, D-DAY: The Invasion That Saved The World.

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A PRO-VAXXER, BUT AT THIS POINT I CAN’T BLAME PEOPLE FOR BEING SKEPTICAL OF EXPERTS: ‘Operation Warp Speed’ is fueling vaccine fears, two top vaccine experts worry.

IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROPHECY:

FIRST-GENERATION RESPIROCYTES: Scientists Just Created Artificial Red Blood Cells That May Be Even Better Than The Real Thing.

COMING THIS FALL: MONDAY NIGHT WOKEBALL? NFL encourages players to peacefully protest, admits it was wrong.

WELL, GOOD: Do-it-yourself COVID-19 tests found to be effective, more comfortable.

PROGRESSIVES’ DREAMS WILL SEND NEW YORK RIGHT BACK TO ‘70S BLIGHT:

Before the riots and looting of the past week, New Yorkers were facing existential questions about their continued residence in the city going forward. Primarily this: How can we stay here when the compensating pleasures of a life lived in crowds might be putting us and our families in danger?

The economic crash caused by the coronavirus response also raised the prospect of an increasing tax burden in this very highly taxed city to deal with the inevitable budgetary shortfalls that will come in its wake — which will inevitably mean paying more for fewer services.

Now, however, there’s a third existential question: How can we stay here when we’ve seen mass lawlessness go unpunished and the authorities in charge entirely ineffectual (at best) when it comes to keeping the streets safe?

The dream vision of the newest generation of activist urban politicians — living in a world in which job-creating businesses like Amazon are treated like pariahs and the systems by which law is enforced are viewed as enforcers of inequality and injustice — is getting closer to reality.

And people who were already thinking of fleeing for their health are thinking even harder about hitting the road to protect their personal safety and long-term security.

Related: American Cities Take Double-Barreled Hit; How Will They Look in the Future?

REPUBLICANS SEIZE!

“Perceived.”

Related: The Collapse of Social Distancing and Establishment Authority.

THEY SAID OH, NO — WILLIAM AND MARY WON’T DO. Lessons From The ABA’s Attempt To Revoke William & Mary Law School’s Accreditation In The 1970s.

But the accreditation process is basically a joke. As a friend comments, ABA law school accreditation is the TSA in suits: kabuki theatre.