STEPHEN A. SMITH BACK AT THE PHILLY INQUIRER: Sports columnist returns to his old job after 27 months.

       "Fyi.....the reports are true," he tweeted Thursday morning. "Today at 12 Noon I RETURN TO THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER as a full-time General Sports Columnist. Details later!"

       "Smith is returning after the newspaper demoted him and subsequently resisted an arbitrator's ruling that the paper was in the wrong," reports Richard Prince reports in his "Journal-isms" column.

       "We are pleased to announce that today Stephen A. Smith returns to the Inquirer as a Sports Columnist," Dan Gross, President of the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia, and Bill Ross, its executive director, notified Guild members.

       "In August, Arbitrator Richard Kasher ruled that Philadelphia Newspapers did not have good and reasonable cause to terminate Stephen and ordered that he be reinstated to his former position and receive a portion of the back pay he would have earned since being unjustly fired in January 2008.

       "The Guild first grieved Stephen's August 2007 demotion to general assignment reporter, then his termination and the matter was taken to arbitration. Once again, Guild counsel Neal Goldstein was successful in bringing one of our members back to work, his 10th consecutive victory against the employer.

       "While Stephen was eager to return to work immediately following Arbitrator Kasher's ruling in August, Philadelphia Newspapers repeatedly challenged the arbitrator's decision and later attempted to reassign Stephen, all of which led to a forceful letter from the arbitrator clearly ordering the company to reinstate Stephen to his Sports Columnist title."

       According to Richard Prince, Kasher's original ruling said testimony from Inquirer Editor William Marimow "persuaded him that Smith's . . . treatment was motivated, at least in part if not substantial part, because Mr. Marimow believed that Mr. Smith was being overpaid," according to an account of the ruling by Andy Zipser in the Guild Reporter, a national Newspaper Guild publication. Smith was the Inquirer's most highly paid staffer.