The Fight for the Future of Philadelphia’s Newspapers

ON JANUARY 11, 2013, Chris Brennan of the Daily News filed a story titled, “8th and Market enters running as potential casino location.”

About midway through the story, Brennan wrote: “The Goldenberg Group owns 60 percent of that land. Lewis Katz, a managing partner of the company that owns the Daily News, the Inquirer, and Philly.com, is a limited partner in Goldenberg but is not involved in the casino application.”

This is the sort of disclosure news organizations make so readers can know any conflicts of interest that might exist.

The Inquirer and Daily News have since published more than 20 stories that include the possibility of a casino being erected at the Goldenberg site. But Katz’s involvement was never mentioned again until columnist Karen Heller finally noted it in January 2014.

Were the papers seeking to tuck Katz out of sight? There is some evidence to suggest Katz might prefer it that way. In 2006, during a separate, earlier casino application process, Katz’s daughter, Melissa Silver, appeared on a casino license application. After questions were raised about Katz’s involvement in the project, he finally came forward—in 2010, four years into the process—as an applicant.

With the current casino project, publisher Bob Hall sent a group email to Katz and the other owners, asking them to divulge any ties they or their families had to possible casino groups or locations so the paper could disclose any potential conflicts of interest.

“I have no relationships,” Katz wrote back, “nor am I involved.”

Was this an oversight on Katz’s part? Katz’s spokesman, Jay Devine, provided the following statement: “[Lewis Katz] does not have any interest in the Goldenberg casino entity or the 8th & Market land. The land is owned by a trust for the benefit of Lewis Katz’s grandchildren, which is not controlled by Lewis Katz.”

Is Katz related to his grandkids?

In December, more questions were raised when Temple University decided to drop seven student athletic programs. The Inquirer’s first story, on December 7th, mentioned and quoted Katz, identifying him as “a member of the Temple board of trustees and chair of the board’s athletic committee,” and “a co-owner of the Inquirer” who “recently pledged to donate $25 million to the school.”

Katz chairs the committee that put forward the restructuring plan for the school’s athletics department, so he is integral to the story. As coverage evolved, however, he wasn’t mentioned by the Inquirer again—either in the sports section or in a follow-up piece that appeared in the local section.

There were complaints from some staffers, not on Team Marimow, that Katz sat in on a 10 a.m. news meeting. An obituary writer also complained when a funeral director sent over an obit and claimed that Katz had said it would be published. (The funeral director provided Katz’s cell-phone number as evidence of the owner’s involvement.) Katz, through his spokesman, Devine, “categorically denies any involvement in any editorial decision by an editor or journalist,” calling this story “absolutely false.”

True, Phillips had long recused herself from writing about any issues that might relate to her boyfriend. In 2013, when she was named city editor, she never edited stories that involved Katz. And when Temple shut down the sports, Phillips recused herself from edit meetings on the subject.

But reporters and editors in the Inquirer newsroom don’t seem to much care about these sorts of issues. Because they have the ownership group they have. And given Katz’s desire to please Phillips, and Phillips’s respect for Marimow, they’ll take that trio, gladly. As multiple staff members told me: “Just look at the alternative.”

IN JANUARY OF 2013, Norcross held a lunch meeting with Bill Marimow at the downtown Marriott. There, Norcross pushed the data about columns and editorial opinion pages across the table. The stats, which pollsters had presented three months earlier, suggested readers didn’t particularly like or follow the Inquirer’s op-eds or columnists.

For old Inquirer hands, whispering like POWs behind barbed wire, the meeting is evidence that Norcross, a political bully, sought to intimidate Marimow into making editorial changes, in violation of the pledge he took when he purchased the papers. (Norcross says he “doesn’t remember” ever handing Marimow the data.)

I also obtained an email from Bob Cauthorn, an Internet consultant, that was sent to Marimow. The consultant lists “directives” Cauthorn says he received from Norcross, who hired him, including one to oversee the redesign of the Inquirer’s website.

Norcross says he saw Cauthorn’s role as organizational and aesthetic, “overseeing design.” But editors typically oversee the work of art directors and Web designers—not the other way around.

The Big Fear is that Norcross will somehow leverage his Inquirer ownership to serve his political and business interests. Again, there is a small evidence trail to follow. I obtained a document from January 2013 involving Philly.com in which management sought and received a legal opinion exploring whether giving columns to Cory Booker and Governor Chris Christie would violate any “equal time” requirements (no, the lawyers said) or political contribution laws (likely yes).

Booker and Christie never got columns. But Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett did.

Norcross told me he never spoke to Corbett about the column. The Governor’s former spokesman, Kevin Harley, says Norcross approached Corbett about joining the New Voices program at Philly.com when the pair met, for the first time, in January 2013 at the Academy of Music’s annual ball.

Harley says he subsequently met on behalf of the Governor with Lexie Norcross before any agreement was struck, and that no quid pro quo was ever raised or resulted.

Suspicions are likely to remain high, however, as long as Norcross is involved. Bill Graham, of the Graham Company insurance brokerage, says he is “rooting for Katz.” Graham says Norcross has tried to buy out his entire company in the past, and he “can only speculate that George, given his political interests, is not interested in investigative journalism, and that the paper, for him, is a way to help those political interests along.”

There is a sense here, of course, that Norcross can never win. His status as political strongman guarantees him constant scrutiny and conspiracy mongering. And in this way, his ownership of the paper guarantees that the Inquirer can never win—that to many in the region, if not the newsroom itself, its every edition will seem somehow suspect.