Growing up near Philadelphia, I read the Bulletin, the afternoon newspaper; the reputation of the morning Inquirer at the time was quite low. And why shouldn’t I have? Their motto was “Nearly Everybody Reads the Bulletin.”

By 1970 the Annenberg family sold the Inquirer to Knight-Ridder, who took decisive steps to improve the quality of the paper. By the late ’70’s its circulation outstripped that of the Bulletin and dominated the advertising dollars in the city. Faced with declining circulation, the difficulties faced by most afternoon papers and steadily mounting losses, the Bulletin shut down in 1982.

Now, via Bill Quick, I find – only a few years too late! – that the Bulletin, now “Philadelphia’s Family Newspaper,” is back. Rather like the relationship of the New York Sun to the Times, the Bulletin provides an editorial policy delightfully distinct from the drearily predictable liberalism of the Inquirer; a terrier’s bark to the lumbering old mastiff. May nearly everyone read it again!