Journalism Critics Question Philadelphia Daily News Cover

Oh, yeah, we should probably make note of this Daily News cover today. The paper has a 2,700-word piece on sex slavery in Philadelphia. A lot of it is harrowing — a pimp named King Kobra would “send the young women who worked for him into the Gallery at Market East to try to recruit new girls,” Morgan Zalot writes — and yet it has to share space on the cover with Sexy Singles. With Sexy Singles Day 2: The Swimsuit Edition. There’s not even a Monkee in it this year!

The cover is so strange-looking it caught the eye of Poynter, the journalism school, and media critic Jim Romenesko. “Do they not have women editors there?” a reader asks him, to which the answer is yes.

Zalot tweeted the cover decision was “far above my pay grade.” The upside: Perhaps her story will get read a lot more due to how much people are scratching their heads about the weird juxtaposition on the cover.