Reading Eagle managing editor nauseates as spokesman for the city

by Steve Reinbrecht

The managing editor of the Reading Eagle bangs on in his Sunday column about how wonderful the Reading area is.

It's generally unremarkable pap -- along with the constant Establishment boosterism apparently demanded by the people who really call the editorial shots.

But it pisses me off because Harry Deitz pretends he’s talking about Reading as his “hometown” when really he lives in Wyomissing.

“For me, dear world, there aren't many places that are better than here in the Reading area. There aren't any places I would rather call home.”

If he really cared about Reading, he would do a better job leading the Reading Eagle newsroom.

He would assign the best reporters to cover City Hall and Reading School District, reporters who would go into the neighborhoods and schools and talk to residents and teachers and students and parents, not merely attend the council and school board meetings.

Deitz describes the Reading area as if it’s homogenously fun and light, a great place to live and visit. "Check out our real estate, schools and churches. [Not to mention our mosques and synagogues.]"

But most of the city’s 88,000 people live in a place much different from where Deitz lives.

Wyomissing is old and white, like Deitz, according to the latest Census figures. In his borough, 91 percent of the people call themselves white, and a whopping 27 percent are over 65.

The city is young and diverse, with 52 percent of the residents identifying as not white, and a whopping 31 percent of the residents under 18 years old.

In Deitz’s town, the median house costs $213,000. In Reading, it costs $68,000.

Where Deitz lives, half the people over 25 years old have at least a bachelor’s degree. In the city, just 9 percent hold a college degree.

In Deitz’s neighborhood, median household income is $70,000. It’s $27,000 in the city. But the income differences are not for lack of showing up at a job – Wyomissing and Reading have the same rate of participation in the labor force – 60 percent.

So if Deitz loves his greater hometown area as much as he says he does, he could run more stories in the Reading Eagle about the Reading School District.

The most important story in the whole county is how Reading School District leaders are working to improve it. We know it was allowed to sink into virtually criminal dysfunction. And no other Berks institution has more effect on Berks County’s economic development or even crime rates that what goes on in Reading public schools. But the paper never covers the schools, the principals, the curriculum, or how the new superintendent is achieving his refreshingly clear goals.

The Reading Eagle appears to cover business, but never asks important questions such as whether banks are lending to minorities, or using new credit-scoring methods to include more entrepreneurs.

Where does all Reading’s community development money go? Does it accomplish anything?

We could use stories about how candidates are groomed and chosen for positions in Reading.

In his column, Deitz tells us he’s worldly enough to have a better perspective on Truth than we non-editors.

“I am not a lifelong resident of Berks County. In some ways that is good, because I have a perspective that is less biased and broader than those who were born, raised and stayed here.”

In fact, Deitz grew up in the Coal Region, that cauldron of new ideas, of questioning deep assumptions, and of cultural diversity. Then he went all the way to Bloomsburg to get his bachelor’s in English.

Though he’s gotten miles from the slag heaps, Deitz still hasn’t escaped the blinkered view of cracker conservatives, in denial about the giant, quick and relentless change hitting Berks County as well as the rest of the world, driven by demographics, technology and globalization.

Someone else should run the newspaper.