Tom Ferrick, Jr. is a journalist with more than 30 years of experience covering breaking news and news features, government, politics and investigations. In his years at the Philadelphia Inquirer, he worked as state government reporter and City Hall bureau chief, as national reporter, chief political writer, investigative reporter and poverty writer. He helped establish the paper's Computer Assisted Reporting unit. For eight years, he was an Inquirer metro columnist. He currently writes a weekly column that appears on the paper's OpEd page.