Daily News

KEYSHLA RIVERA didn't expect gunfire as she walked with her brother Jesus along a street in Fairhill in September. When the shots stopped, Jesus, 16, lay dying on Cambria Street, tragically caught in crossfire. "My brother tried to get away," Rivera, 18, recalled. "They got my brother by mistake. " Police quickly arrested John Perez, 29 - but a second man wanted for the killing, Kelvin Montero, 19, remained at large. That is, until his picture appeared in the Daily News ' "Week's Most Wanted" feature Oct. 31. A vigilant reader recognized Montero and dimed him out to authorities, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.

The Philadelphia Daily News will become an edition of The Inquirer on March 30 in a cost-saving move by Philadelphia Newspapers L.L.C., Daily News publisher Mark Frisby said yesterday. The only change at the tabloid Daily News will be some wording under the paper's flag designating it a "unique edition" of The Inquirer, Frisby said. Content, staff, and management are not changing, he said. "Nothing is going to change about our passionate voices, about how we do what we do," Daily News editor Michael Days said.

Adrian Lee, the Daily News' staunchly conservative editorial page columnist, is taking a leave from the paper to join an ideological soulmate - U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III. Beginning next Wednesday, and until the end of the Reagan administration in January 1989, Lee said, he will serve as a public-relations assistant to Meese - writing speeches, composing opinion articles that will be offered to newspapers around the country, and briefing...

A Daily News deliveryman allegedly sent his 11-year-old son to buy a packet of drugs for him yesterday, unaware that a police video camera was trained on them. Father and son were among 19 alleged drug buyers and four dealers picked up yesterday around A and Somerset streets in Kensington as part of Operation Fishnet, an ongoing roundup conducted by the police narcotics strike force. The arrests resulted in the confiscation of 12 customers' vehicles and one dealer's car, police said.

The Philadelphia Daily News has won the 1989 Keystone Press Contest's "Sweepstakes Award" in writing and editing competition with other Pennsylvania newspapers with a daily circulation of 150,000 or more. The prestigious sweepstakes designation goes to the newspaper with the highest number of first and second place awards in the competition. A panel of judges awarded the Daily News five first-place and three second- place awards. First place for editorial writing went to editorial page editor, Richard Aregood for an editorial titled "The Gynecologist" criticizing state Rep. Stephen F. Freind's theory that women who are raped cannot become pregnant.

SUBJECT: May 12 article on Roosevelt Boulevard and buses. This is why I love you folks at the Daily News - sometimes you really make a difference in the lives of your readers and the citizens of this city. Why did it take until the DN did that article for someone to think of fixing this. SEPTA and the school knew for years that kids were running across the Boulevard. And as for Mr. Gruber, yes, kids do tend to do stupid, sometimes dangerous things, that is why they are called children and have not yet put behind them foolish behavior - we are the adults and need to follow the traffic laws, which tell us to slow down near a school area.

A boycott of the Daily News begun last week by a group upset with the newspaper's coverage of the black community has had no impact so far on overall sales, Daily News executives said yesterday. Based on the first three days of sales since the boycott began Wednesday, "Circulation has been unaffected," Daily News editor Zachary Stalberg said. The paper's average daily circulation is 235,000. That figure typically varies by thousands of copies each day of the week, according to Stalberg, who declined for competitive reasons to provide exact circulation figures for last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Daily News' city top 10 football teams 1. Archbishop Wood 3-1 2. La Salle 3-1 3. Malvern Prep 3-1 4. Roman Catholic 3-1 5. Father Judge 3-1 6. St. Joseph's Prep 3-1 7. Cardinal O'Hara 2-1 8. Frankford 2-2 9. Northeast 2-2 10. George Washington 4-0 Under Consideration: West Catholic (1-3), Haverford School (2-1), Edward Bok (4-0), Monsignor Bonner (2-2), Archbishop Ryan (3-1), Chestnut Hill (2-2).  

A South Philadelphia man has sued the Daily News, saying he was defamed by the newspaper's description of him as a prime suspect in last August's shooting of Pagan Motorcycle Club president Steven "Gorilla" Mondevergine. The 29-year-old delicatessen owner, Michael Hendri, said through his lawyer, Richard Sprague, that the description of Hendri in a June 12 article was false and placed his life in danger. Sprague said Detectives Robert Lis and Robert Conn, the South Detective Division investigators assigned to the Mondevergine case, had assured him that Michael Hendri was not a suspect in the shooting.

The Philadelphia Daily News yesterday announced cost-cutting steps and other moves aimed at making the paper profitable in 1988, two years earlier than expected. Among the measures are a cutback in home delivery of the paper, elimination of 20 jobs in the home-delivery department and cuts in the news budget. Revenues would be increased through the sale of ads on pages where they do not now appear and more combined ad sales with The Inquirer. Both newspapers are owned by Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. (PNI)