Last month, Philadelphia magazine embarked on a yearlong project examining the city’s prickly race relations in a series titled "Tales of Two Cities: Race in Philadelphia."

The launch was followed by a public forum co-sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, where the participants in the first issue, author and Penn professor Michael Eric Dyson and former Temple law school dean and political consultant Carl Singley, waxed candidly about race for several hours before a packed, attentive house at the Wharton School. Larry Platt, Philadelphia magazine’s newest editor, at the helm just shy of 18 months, is both optimistic and guarded about his publication’s newest challenge.

City Paper: I'd like to talk with you about your magazine's ambitious project -- and I do believe it's ambitious. According to your press release, this series, Tales of Two Cities, was "prompted by the vastly divergent way Philadelphians reacted to the bugging of the mayor's office and the recent election." The cover of your January edition, which introduced the series, teased the Michael Eric Dyson story with the headline, "Why White People Don't Get John Street." But the actual name of the story carrying Dyson's byline was titled "What White People Don't Get." Given that the accompanying story was about Carl Singley, who most know had a fairly public falling-out with the mayor and then chaired Katz's election campaign, what was the philosophy in pairing those two stories side by side?

Larry Platt: Well, I think they worked well together, given this being the first installment of the series, it would be much more directly related to the mayor's race. In future issues, we're not going to be nearly that political. But I thought that it was a sort of good point/counterpoint. It wasn't Dyson's defense of the mayor because that wasn't his point. His point was to sort of expand on the context of the reaction in the African-American community to the bugging. And Singley, who is in this unique position of rethinking his politics and his racial politics now as a result of what happened in the mayor's race. … So I thought they were a good counterpoint to one another, not in terms of debating the mayor's race. If you'll notice, when we had the forum at Penn, it wasn't a debate and we all purposefully didn't want it to be a debate. We wanted it to be sort of higher-minded than that going forward and talking about how we can talk about race.

CP: I thought that [the cover line] was misleading because [in his essay] Dyson really spoke about what white people don't get about him. But the headline was "Why White People Don’t Get John Street." And as a result, I was disappointed that there wasn’t more ideological division between Dyson and Singley at the forum.

LP: It was a deliberate thing not to relitigate the mayor's race. The deliberate thing was to talk about race going forward. But as to … the issue of the cover line: I think his piece was about … explaining the African-American reaction to the bugging. So it's what white people don't get about that reaction. He gave context to things like Street's use of signifying, calling himself Job, or Chaka Fattah calling Street Jesus. And he put all that in a context separate and apart from Michael Eric Dyson. Did he use first-person examples? Of course -- but to serve the greater point of explaining the African-American reaction and the different ways that the groups use language. And I thought that was one of the most interesting things he had to say, that when John Street says he's like Job … it comes out of a tradition of struggle. It doesn't mean he is Rosa Parks when he says … "I'm gonna struggle like Rosa Parks." He means it metaphorically.

CP: Given the dearth of stories in your pages that actually target the black community, and the fact that Dyson was only recently hired as a writer at large, and that the only black full-time editorial staff person is an art director hired less than a year ago, how does Philadelphia magazine steward a meaningful conversation about race with prior practices that have been so noninclusive?

LP: Well, I think by doing it. I mean, institutions change and grow just like people. And you decide to be a civic leader and you get judged by what you do. And we're doing it. … You know media in general, I think, on race … sheds more heat than light. And this is an experiment to do the exact opposite.

LP: It's important that this magazine not try to pretend like we have any answers or expertise. We'll do what we always do -- which is tell gripping stories and ask questions and question answers and be intellectually honest and earnest in the pursuit of truth. And sometimes we'll make mistakes. But the alternative is not to engage, arguably, the most important issue of the day. So, is it risky? Of course, but anything worthwhile is.

CP: I'm just guessing, but I imagine that your magazine's demographic doesn't include many blacks -- which begs the question, who are you writing this series for?

LP: I think we have about 12 to 15 percent readership that's African American. Our demographics are elite. It's for the elite and those who aspire to join the elite in Philadelphia and the region. There is a vibrant African-American elite and African-American middle class that we'd like to have read our magazine in greater numbers than they do already. And so it is both for our readers and the pursuit of other readers, newer readers.

CP: Dyson is not a Philadelphian and he just arrived here about a year and a half ago. Why was he chosen to usher in your race series, as opposed to someone who has … a more personal understanding of Philadelphia's unique racial history, like, for instance, Temple professor Molefi Asanti or political commentator Rotan Lee?

LP: You're right, [Dyson] is not well-schooled on Philadelphia or Philadelphia history -- even though he's interested in learning. But … on a certain level, when you talk about race in Philadelphia, you're also talking about race in America, geographic boundaries notwithstanding, and he is a leading thinker and writer on the subject and we thought he had something to say. He was also very close to Street in the mayor's race, so he brought that perspective to it. Which is not to say that we don't want to hear from some of the [other] people that you named, which is why we found someone like Linn Washington [an African-American journalism professor at Temple and Philadelphia Tribune columnist writing for the March issue]. But, I think that Dyson is a player, he’s smart, he’s a great writer, so it seems to me that there’s no downside with him.

CP: But choosing Dyson over a native Philadelphian to launch your series -- Philadelphia magazine is going to attempt to address race issues and they snub the blacks that are already here in the city. What about that?

CP: Picking Dyson, a foreigner, a carpetbagger, for all intents and purposes? Could be a perceived snub, no?

LP: Well, it could be. It would be a snub if you pulled him off an escalator in a mall and said, "Hey. Would you like to write a piece for us?" But are you suggesting that Michael Eric Dyson is not qualified?

CP: I'm only suggesting that he's not a Philadelphian and Philadelphia's race relations are unique. Take the Rizzo years, for example.

LP: It's one person's account and someone who has immense credibility on the subject of race in America.

CP: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that he didn't actually write that essay. That he spoke it, and it was written after the fact.

LP: Yeah, that's not true. He came here; he spoke to the staff. We tape-recorded it. We then thought afterwards of putting it in the magazine because we were so intrigued by it and we sent him a transcript of it, which he then rewrote and worked into a piece.

CP: Why has Philadelphia magazine never had a black staff writer? And, considering that you’re going to take this leap into covering a subject over the course of a year, do you feel the need to hire one?

LP: I'd like to -- at some point. I have no plans to make any hires now. But it would be nice. And as to the historical question, I don't know. I think it deals with something we spoke about earlier, which is that Philadelphia magazine has at best ignored race and most of the time I think it’s considered itself not writing for African-American readership, which I’d like to change. And it would be good in brainstorming sessions to get outside viewpoints of people who haven’t lived exactly like some of us here have. My three predecessors were all white, male Jews from Penn. And I like to say, I’m a white, male Jew who went to Syracuse, so I’m affirmative action -- Philadelphia magazine style. [laughs]

CP: In the magazine's first-ever political endorsement last October, you picked Sam Katz over John Street. At the end of the day, Katz wound up with only 2 percent of the black vote. Given the fact that it appears that you backed not only a loser, but a candidate who had apparently alienated the black community, why should blacks care about this series?

LP: If anyone read that endorsement and the process that led up to it, it was an intellectually honest attempt to weigh in on a civic issue. Just like this series will be. And people might disagree with the end result. We ended up endorsing Sam Katz in a very close staff vote, by the way, because he had bolder ideas -- whether or not he'd be able to pull them off. I'm happy to say that we have a piece coming out in March that John Street is governing more in line with the Katz vision that, if you read the endorsement, we laid out. … Street, in the campaign, was the advocate of status quo. Now, to his credit, he's governing as the visionary candidate we wished he had been. So, we don't back away from what we wrote in the October issue, but take some solace in the fact that Street is doing a lot of the stuff we were urging.

CP: At the forum held at Penn a few weeks ago, an audience member questioned the absence of black women from your panel. How do you plan to address that in the future?

LP: To have women. It was a valid point. I think my response was, "My bad," after Carl or Michael said, "Let's blame the white guy." [laughs]

CP: Your future panels, though, will [include both blacks and whites], right?

LP: Yes, absolutely. This is the story of my life, though. We're really just flying blind here, we haven't planned whatever the next panel's going to be. But one of the things we're kicking around is maybe we do it as one of those PBS roundtables, with Charles Ogletree in the middle and all these people sitting around and they work out a hypothetical. Those are always fun. We don't want to be wonky and boring. We want to engage people in a way that's fun, but also enlightening, so how we do that is still up in the air. But like I said at the forum, we'll probably screw up now and again, but they won't be malevolent screwups.