CENTER AWARDS: Project Launch Juror’s Award: Will Steacy

It used to mean something when you told people you worked at The Philadelphia Inquirer,” a reporter recently told me, “This place used to be a Pulitzer factory.” For the past four years I have been photographing the rapid transformation of The Philadelphia Inquirer as the paper emerges from bankruptcy and struggles to adapt to a digital era. Through a depiction of The Inquirer’s efforts to prevail despite depleted ad revenue, a steady decline in circulation, layoffs, buy-outs, and bankruptcy, my intent is to reveal the challenges and harsh realities that face the newspaper industry today. While many credit the advent of the Internet as the origin of newspapers’ current woes, the newspaper industry has faced tremendous battles for the past quarter-century