Inquirer business columnist Joseph N. DiStefano on Philly tech [Friday Q&A]

With the pressure of updating a daily news blog in addition to his regular column in the Philadelphia Inquirer, columnist Joseph N. DiStefano says that the biggest change over the last few years in the newspaper offices at 400 N. Broad is acceleration.
“It’s a lot easier to get a hold of key documents and get answers to a lot of basic questions online,” says DiStefano, who pens the Inky’s PhillyDeals column.
“But reporting is reporting. News is information that someone else wants to suppress.”
DiStefano has the gruff exterior one might expect of a veteran newspaper columnist who writes hard news about regional business.
“I used to tell CEOs that if you’re indicted, I will cheerfully write that story on page one. Not to celebrate indictment, but because we have the space there,” he says. “It’s an adversarial role.”
Since 2007, DiStefano’s distinct attitude has been on display in that column, which covers a broad range of business topics, including development and real estate, finance and Philadelphia’s technology community.
DiStefano, who grew up on the Main Line, has been in the reporting business since 1988, when he was looking for a steady line of work after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in economics and U.S. history.
He’s gone on to report finance at Bloomberg and in 2005, published Comcasted, about Comcast’s cable strategy, all while he and his wife were raising six kids.
After the jump, we ask to borrow DiStefano’s crib notes for business and technology reporting in Philadelphia.

Edited for length and clarity, as always.
How long have you been covering technology in Philly?
I joined the Inquirer in 1988 and I’m on my third shift. If you want to get a raise in a mature industry, leave. I went to Chicago, New York. I came back [to Philadelphia] in 2007 and started writing a daily business column and blog. I covered financial institutions for most of 10 years before that and covered tech investments on the side, including the boom and bust during the dot com years.
I’m not the only person that writes about tech at the Inquirer. I’m kind of the cavalry. The artillery is investigative, infantry is the day-to-day, covering the city. The technology scene, which is trying to make companies and careers in tech — now that it’s cheaper than the dot come era to get in the business — is just one part of my job covering business in Philadelphia.
Despite the blogosphere, getting a story in the Inquirer is still a big deal — share the experience with us on having that ability to really get someone’s name out there.
I probably get 500 emails a day, 20-30 phone calls, messages on LinkedIn and Twitter. I still get faxes.
A lot of these people are ready to talk, give substantial information about really interesting stories. [But I look for stories that have] an easy way to separate out what I can do with this information. If you’re trying to get us to tell your story so you can reach customers that are our readers, that’s something people advertise for. If you’re going to hire or lay off 100 people, that’s news.
Looking at the bigger picture, where/what is Philly’s tech ecosystem? What has changed?
You’ve got this whole history with legacy companies, collectively tens of thousands of people, some are growing, some are part of international systems. Then you’ve got small, really focused software companies. Bentley Systems for example. Invite Media. Indy Hall, the companies at the University City Science Center.
The [dot com] crash made it tougher for a lot of the old line companies. They’re growing again, adding clients. You have Comcast buying NBC—I don’t think we’ve yet seen the full impact of what that’s going to be. And then there’s the creative stuff, basically a lot more people not necessarily seeing their career as being completely corporate.
What do you know that would surprise people that have only been active in the Philadelphia technology community since 2008ish?
Every company you think is new is in someway is connected to an older company. So many people … have links to that older story.

What needs to change to make Philadelphia a stronger hub?
What people complain about, and not just in Philly, is that there are so many layers of government. Zoning, planning, nonprofits, promotional groups. Everyone is trying to get a piece of the action. In some respects, we have too much government, and some respects not enough.
Companies like Comcast, developers like Bart Blatstein, who have been here a long time and know how to navigate the system, they know who to go to, how to get what they need. But it’s not so friendly for a casual small business that may or may not be the business of tomorrow. The Nutter administration gets it, but there’s an awful lot of obstacles in the way. Too many people have a stake in the system staying the way it is.
In all your research, why is Comcast in Center City? Is there anything to learn to attract or retain others?
For years Comcast was in Bala Cynwyd, not primarily a Philly cable company. It was fairly late to this market.
What happened is that they made a promise that if they got Philly business, they would move their headquarters here. Ralph Roberts is originally from New York, but here, he doesn’t have to pay New York rents and he still has access to all the New York services that he wants. They are probably biggest employer in the city outside of hospitals and universities. The question is how far that’s going to go in bringing other companies here. Will they eventually be the center of a really thriving system?
Do you ever feel a pull to advocate for tech business in Philly, having covered it for so long and knowing the intricacies?
Clearly, what’s good for Philly is good for our company. The more people here, more active younger people, the more there is to write about and the more folks employed. But the job of a reporter, columnist, is not to advocate for one place over another, but to point out what’s going on, what’s important, how things work, how they break down, what’s successful and what isn’t. You’re describing reality. You’re giving the raw material so people can make decisions.
If we confuse describing what’s going on with defending or pushing our city or region over others, we risk not telling the truth, not giving the full story. I believe this is an attractive area for business. Every morning when I ride to work, I’m reminded why all the ethnic groups came here, to work here and to run businesses of their own. The advocacy we do is to tell the truth.