Philadelphia

I LIVE in Philadelphia. I have for nearly 40 of my 57 years. It is a wonderful city but also a corrupt one. Power is concentrated in the hands of a select few, who sometimes act in the public interest but too often act in their own interests or the interests of friends who have hot lines into their ears.

The best defense against that, the public’s only defense, has always been the existence of the city’s two newspapers, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News. They are a shell of what they once were. But the papers, in spite of endless staff cuts over the past two decades, still report. They still investigate. They still provide immeasurable value.

And now the city stands to effectively lose them. Some of the hedge funds that bought the papers’ parent company out of bankruptcy in 2010 are now considering selling out to a consortium of investors organized by Edward G. Rendell, one of the most powerful politicians in the modern history of Pennsylvania. Mr. Rendell says he will have no financial stake and is still reportedly looking for other investors, but it seems to be the only bid in play.

Personally, I like Mr. Rendell. I wrote a book about him. But he is a former district attorney of the city, a former mayor of the city, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and, since 2011, a former governor of Pennsylvania. Not even the press baron William Randolph Hearst had a résumé as fraught with potential conflicts of interest.