By Ralph Ciprianofor BigTrial.net
In July, after he got through negotiating a new labor contract, H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest, the philanthropist who owns the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and philly.com, celebrated by passing out $1,000 bonuses to his employees.
Today, a month after Terry Egger, Lenfest's hand-picked successor, took over as publisher, he will lay off 46 newsroom employees.
What the hell happened, union leaders want to know. When he was passing out bonuses, Lenfest bragged he had turned the company around, recalled Bill Ross, executive director of the Philadelphia Newspaper Guild. Then, "He [Lenfest] hires the guy" [Egger] . . . and has him do all the dirty work."
The layoffs begin a merger of what are now three distinct news operations, the Inquirer, Daily News and philly.com, into "a unified, one-newsroom approach," Egger wrote Monday in a letter to all employees.
Lenfest, along with the late Lewis Katz, were the winning bidders at a court-ordered auction in 2014, buying the city's only two daily newspapers and website for the inflated price of $88 million. But Philadelphia Media Network, the parent company that owns the two papers and website, has lost $90 million in advertising revenues since 2011, Egger said. The current layoffs are needed to save between $5 million and $6 million, Egger told employees.
That prompted union leaders to recall that Lenfest previously donated around that same amount, $5.8 million in 2010, to keep the SS United States, the rusting ocean liner docked on Delaware Avenue, out of the scrapyard.
"This isn't the only sinking ship Gerry's invested in," Ross cracked.
