Tom Ferrick
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| Tom Ferrick, Jr. | |
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| Born | 1949 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
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| Occupation | Journalist, columnist |
| Spouse | Sharon Sexton |
Tom Ferrick, Jr. (1949) is a columnist most recently with the Philadelphia Inquirer. He had been a columnist at the Inquirer since 1998 but left the newspaper in 2008.
Ferrick wrote a biweekly column that runs every Wednesday and Sunday. The Philadelphia native has spent almost 30 years as a reporter, focusing mostly on government [1]
His politics are often considered liberal, as is the Inquirer. Ferrick has come under fire for his columns, including his pursuit of the Bush administration and other leaders who acted on the WMD intelligence that acted as a primary factor leading the American military in Iraq in March of 2003.
Ferrick is married to Sharon Sexton, a co-publisher and editor of Parents Express, a 70,000-circulation monthly parenting magazine published in Philadelphia. He and Sexton have two children. Born in South Philadelphia, Ferrick attended Temple University in the late 1960s, but never graduated, having spent too much time at the school newspaper, The Temple News, he has claimed. [2]
Nonetheless, Ferrick got a with a since-disbanded news service, the United Press International, in Philadelphia and later in Harrisburg. In 1976, he was hired as a Statehouse reporter in Harrisburg for the Inquirer and has been there ever since, climbing through a series of reporting and editing positions. For the Inquirer, Ferrick has been, among other roles, the City Hall bureau chief, a poverty reporter, a political writer, a deputy editor and a special projects writer. Ferrick was a Richard Burke Memorial Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania in 1996 [3]. Recently, Ferrick has been active in the Great Expectations Project, a partnership between UPenn and the Inquirer, which has held public forums throughout Philadelphia to accumulate the feelings of voters in order to influence the 2007 Philadelphia mayoral race.
His father, for whom Ferrick is named, was a major-league pitcher for five teams from 1941 through 1952. His career reached a pinnacle when, in 1950, while playing for the New York Yankees, he led American League relief pitchers in wins and beat his hometown Phillies in the third game of a four-game sweep [2] .
Philadelphia Weekly, a local alternative newspaper, reported in 2007 that Ferrick had resigned, but would remain on staff in order to cover the election for mayor. [3] Ferrick left the paper in February 2008.
