About a year ago (“How Did This Guy Turn This Guy Into Philly’s Most Popular Pitchman?,” November 2008), we tailed Eagles offensive tackle Jon Runyan for a couple of weeks as he hustled to do radio and TV gigs between games, working to establish himself as a media personality for his inevitable life after football. Now Runyan, 35, isn’t so busy, and he’s hoping to push back his second act just a bit longer. The 13-year veteran became a free agent after knee surgery in January, and no NFL team has signed him, though the Eagles, Buffalo, and Kansas City have given him a look. Still hoping to play but unsure where he’ll wind up, he hasn’t landed a local media gig this season either. So, what’s Big Jon doing? We looped back to ask him, at his fifth-annual Jon Runyan Score for the Cure golf tournament at Ramblewood Country Club in Mount Laurel. — Don Steinberg

When was the last football season you weren’t playing?
Sophomore year in high school. Nineteen eighty-nine. That was before I played football.

This must be really weird for you.
It is kind of weird. It’s different. I still want to play. I’m waiting for the right opportunity.

There’s was a poll at Philly.com asking, “Should the Eagles sign Runyan?” — and 96.4 percent said “yes.”
The fans don’t control the team, though (laughs). It’s unfortunate that, the situation that I’m in, I’m probably going to have to wait for somebody to get hurt.

Are the Eagles your primary choice?
No. I mean, at this point it’s a matter of the opportunity and proving I can do it. It doesn’t matter where it is.

Your family is pretty entrenched here. You and your wife finished building a mansion here just before the real-estate market tanked.
I’ll probably be buried in that house. I don’t care what the market is.

But you’d play somewhere else?
That’s not an issue. That’s been discussed. Shoot, at this point in the season it’s three-and-a-half months, even if you go deep in the playoffs. And now that I’ve got this golf tournament out of the way, you really don’t have to come back for much.

How are you physically?
I feel a lot better than I did towards the later two-thirds of last year. Football’s gonna happen at some point this season. It’s gonna be there. I’ve put a lot of work in during the last eight months to bail on it now. I was at therapy the other day, and counted up, I think it was 107 visits to physical therapy here, and that wasn’t counting the ones I did down in Birmingham with Dr. [James] Andrews. I’m 125, 130 visits to physical therapy in seven months. So that’s a commitment. It’s totally ruined my golf game.

Last season you were doing a weekly radio show on WIP and a regular segment on Comcast SportsNet, preparing for life after football. And now?
I’m not doing anything. Broadcasting, sometimes people are afraid to commit because they know you still want to play. So I’m stuck in between two, three different things, waiting on one to happen. I think part of it’s me. I could reach out more to those kinds of people, but I’m not really wanting to put my football business out there and get talking about other people. Technically it’s a poker game, you know? Do you really want to show your hand?

These golf tournaments raise a lot of money to fight prostate cancer. You usually bring in a few active players and a lot of former players, whose connection with the sport now is interacting with fans instead of playing the game. Are you picturing yourself that way yet?
It’ll happen. I’m not gonna lock myself in a closet and disappear. I’ve prepared myself for years and years for it to come to an end. I’m getting a taste of it right now. But I’m gonna put it off another year, or two or three, if I can.

I respect Ken Doctor. I like Ken Doctor. I’ve quoted Ken Doctor. But his idea of bringing young people to journalism with $35K-a-year jobs is most definitely not the answer. First off, with 12 years under my belt writing features at alt-weeklies and now a city magazine, I’m not seeing a shortage of that much-coveted tribe of “young people” who want to work in journalism. When I speak in college classes or walk through this magazine’s offices, I see scores of “young people” who want my job.

Read the rest of this entry »

Looking for insight into U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter’s decision today to switch his party allegiance to the Democrats? Our November 2006 oral history of the senator’s 50-year public career contains what might be a startling fact: His first active involvement in politics in the late 1950s was as … a Democrat. And there’s plenty more where that came from, culled from interviews with Gov. Ed Rendell, talk-show host Michael Smerconish, political consultant Neil Oxman, and more. From the intro:

Raised in Russell, Kansas — the prairie outpost that also gave the world Bob Dole — and schooled at Penn and Yale, Arlen Specter first made his name as a young attorney taking on the Teamsters and working on the Warren Commission. In the years since — as district attorney, defense attorney, perpetual candidate, senator — Specter took his place in the city’s political pantheon, alongside such icons as Rizzo, Tate and Dilworth.

For the past quarter-century, he’s also been a Zelig-like national figure. From his role in sinking Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination to his cross-examination of Anita Hill, from stem-cell research to the impeachment of Bill Clinton, Specter’s greatest talent may be his unique ability to put himself — somehow, some way — in the center of the nation’s most important debates.

Read “The Full Specter” in our archives.

Illustration by Rob Day from the November 2006 issue of Philadelphia Magazine.

Though the company teetered on the verge of bankruptcy at the time, this past December Philadelphia Media Holdings awarded bonuses to CEO Brian P. Tierney, vice president of finance Richard Thayer and Daily News publisher Mark Frisby.

PMH board chair Bruce Toll confirmed bonuses of $350,000 for Tierney and $150,000 each for Thayer and Frisby in a phone conversation on Friday. Reached by phone, Frisby told Philadelphia, “The numbers are wrong. But I’m not going to give you a number.”

Frisby refused to comment any further.

Tierney did not immediately return phone calls requesting a comment for this story.

Thayer could not be reached by e-mail for a comment.

Toll had first told Philadelphia that no bonuses had been awarded when asked earlier this week, but agreed to look into the matter. Today he said the bonuses had in fact been paid.

“I forgot,” he said. “I’m involved with something like 20 companies, and [when Philadelphia first called] you were asking me to remember what happened in December. But when I asked around, some other board members reminded me we had approved the bonuses.”

PMH filed for bankruptcy in February. Toll, of the homebuilding Toll Brothers company, confirmed that the PMH board knew the company¹s fiscal situation was dire. “The financial condition of the papers was obviously not good,” said Toll. “We knew what was going to happen sooner or later.”

So why give out $650,000 in bonuses? “We thought it was deserved,” he said. “But we can’t get into the details because we’re involved in bankruptcy proceedings.”

It had earlier been revealed that Tierney received a raise in December, just before Christmas, boosting his pay roughly 40 percent to $850,000. The company initially defended the raise, which was revealed in its bankruptcy filing, by saying that Tierney had taken on extra responsibilities since his initial deal had been struck.

Tierney gave up the raise shortly after it was revealed. Frisby and Thayer simultaneously gave back smaller raises. Now comes news of the bonuses, which were awarded just two months after the company’s unions voted to postpone $25-a-week raises for each of its members at the request of PMH.

UPDATE: Saturday morning, Bruce Toll called back and left a voice mail message saying he is not actually sure of the bonus amounts.

Brian Tierney still has not returned phone calls requesting a  comment. — Steve Volk

A Q&A with Jessica Remo about the reporting for her March 2009 article “Jon + Kate + 8 = $$$”

What did you think of the show before you began reporting?
Before I began my research I was a huge fan. There is no denying how adorable the Gosselin children are, and I thought Jon and Kate’s banter was natural, normal.

When I began my research, I was astounded by some of the things written about the family on some of the blogs written about the show. Actually, heartbroken is the word. As much as I loved the show, I have to admit that being able to watch these kids all the time, in some of their most vulnerable moments (Collin being constipated, the kids coming out of the bath — to name just a few), did feel a little indulgent. I am of no relation to the family, yet I can gawk at their children for hours almost daily. It’s unsettling.

Did you ever meet the family in person?
I did attend two events where I met Kate in person. The first was a book signing at the Barnes & Noble in the Promenade Shops in Center Valley, Pa., right before Christmas. The place was mobbed — you had to get a ticket and stand in line, then they called your number. The turnout at these events is more amazing because they aren’t advertised on the show or Jon and Kate’s website. You have to scour the blogs or be from the area to learn of them.

The other event was the speaking engagement I detail in the story at First Assembly of God church in Marcy, New York, on January 11th. The scene there was giddier — there was even a woman who had cut her hair like Kate. I asked someone working the event if there would be a chance for me to interview Kate, but was told no. I later heard that at other events organizers have asked that no journalists be present.

Kate explained that Jon had just come home from a shoot and she couldn’t make him leave without spending time with the kids. The people at First Assembly were quite disappointed, to say the least, and in my reporting I learned that either Jon or Kate has backed out at the last minute at other events. Rarely do they appear together now, and they’ve admitted as much in recent interviews.

After Kate spoke, she signed copies of Multiple Blessings. I asked her bodyguard if maybe after the signing she would have a few minutes for me. He said he would see what he could do. I waited, and at the very end he asked for me, but the answer was still a “no.” He gave me the phone number for Laurie Goldberg, the senior vice president of communications for TLC, and said we could set something up over the phone. I had already been in touch with Laurie, however, at this point. No interview came of it.

Who else did you speak to during your reporting?
I talked to or corresponded with more than 100 people for this piece, many of whom asked to remain anonymous. I began, naturally, with Kate’s manager, Julie Carson May. I left at least four messages for her over the course of a month, with no response. Then I tried Kate’s book publisher, Zondervan, where I spoke to Karen Campbell, who does PR for the book, and she directed me to Laurie Goldberg at TLC. I tried to set something up with Laurie over e-mail for several weeks, but to no avail. Finally, she said I could e-mail her a list of questions and she’d see what she could do. I told her I would not because it’s not good journalism — we wanted direct access to Jon and Kate because we didn’t want a publicist answering for them through e-mail. In an e-mailed response, Laurie accused me of having “an agenda” and said “we prefer to work with ethical journalists.”

Some of the outside sources I talked to were many people who had appeared on the show; many of the churches that the Gosselins had appeared at or canceled on; many of the local places the family visited on the show; locals in Wyomissing, Elizabethtown, and the greater Reading area; people involved in the makeover of the Gosselins’ Wyomissing home; and other reporters who interviewed the Gosselins, like Shauna Lake from KUTV in Utah. I tried to speak with Kate’s parents, but they did not return my phone calls. I spoke for quite some time with Paul Petersen, whom I mention in the story, as well as the labor departments of California and Pennsylvania to compare and contrast the legislation. I spoke to David Rothermel, Jon’s former employer, as you can also see in the story. And I did see the state’s documentation surrounding Jon’s termination; our research editor also confirmed this with the Pennsylvania unemployment office, which had denied Jon’s claim for unemployment. I also spoke with Julie, Aunt Jodi’s sister, who wrote the blog Truth Breeds Hatred.

How much of the information on the blogs about the Gosselins is true?
Not all of it. There’s a lot of wild speculation out there. I can only personally endorse the facts detailed in my story, which were confirmed by the magazine’s fact-checking department. However, if it’s on the internet and about the Gosselins, I’ve read it. I’ve also watched each episode — there are 80-plus now — at least twice.

The reason I turned to Gosselins Without Pity as one avenue for my reporting is simply because it is the most trafficked blog on all things Gosselin. To not mention or contact them would have been neglectful on my part. But I did not take their word for fact, and I of course read other blogs, with both positive and negative angles. The battle that’s being waged between the different fans of different blogs in the magazine’s web comment section right now has a lot of history. I expected the heat from some of these diehard fans.

Why hasn’t this information been published in the mainstream media before?
Probably because no one has had the time or patience to confirm it all. The reporting on this took me more than two months and included persuading a lot of people to talk to me.

Illustration by Gluekit, from the March 2009 issue of Philadelphia magazine.

Philebrity broke the news late last night with the full text of a Newspaper Guild memo to its members, and the Inquirer confirmed it this morning with an A1 story: “Inquirer Owner Files for Bankruptcy.”

For an in-depth look at what brought Brian Tierney’s Philadelphia Media Holdings group to this drastic step after fewer than three years of ownership of the Inquirer and Daily News, read staff writer Steve Volk’s in-depth feature from our February issue, “1978 Called. It Wants Its Newspaper Back.”

Photo-illustration by C.J. Burton from the February issue of Philadelphia magazine.

BY VICTOR FIORILLO

Thanks to an intense rift between longtime Philadelphia Film Festival honcho and TLA Entertainment CEO Ray Murray and the festival’s co-presenters at the Philadelphia Film Society, it looks like all you movie lovers will have to turn to Netflix to get your film fill this spring.

The drama started back in December when Murray, frustrated with certain members of the PFS board that he describes as “elitist and shockingly Republican,” walked away from the project after more than seven years, taking his plethora of film contacts and several defectors with him. “There’s a Main Line group that wants to see a smaller, more boutiquey, Hamptons/Telluride type of festival,” says Murray. “But film is a popular art. It’s for people from the Main Line and the Northeast.”

Despite the break, PFS forged ahead, announcing a March 26th opening date for this year’s event. Murray quickly filed suit against the PFS for money he says they owe him and announced his own festival, CineFest, — also for March 26th. Earlier this week, it looked like the PFS festival would be canceled, since there’s really not room for two festivals, and since Murray was the guy with the know-how and connections.

But then on Wednesday came talk of a settlement that would have united the two sides for one last Philadelphia Film Festival. Alas, terms proved elusive, and today PFS informed Murray’s team that a countersuit would be forthcoming, possibly preventing CineFest from taking place at all. “It is war,” declares Murray, who adds, “We are probably going to have to cancel [CineFest].”

Andy Greenblatt, executive director of the Philadelphia Film Society, says, “I am very disappointed that this settlement is not working out, as I think the loss of the spring festival is deeply unfortunate for Philadelphia.” We couldn’t agree more.

When asked back in the summer of 2006 how she felt about the star-making power of American Idol, singer and Mayfair native Joanna Pacitti told Philadelphia magazine’s Richard Rys that she’d “rather have my experience than overnight success.” It seems she’s gotten her wish yet again: Right after she was shown reaching the semifinals last night, the show announced that Pacitti, 23, was “ineligible” to continue in the competition.

The show’s statement didn’t specify why she was removed, but it’s not the first time Pacitti has approached a show-biz pinnacle only to be slapped down. Read the bad-luck history of this former almost-Annie girl in “Hard-Knock Life,” from our archives.

Photo by Ari Michelson, from the July 2006 issue of Philadelphia magazine

All big-city newspapers have been hurt by the rise of the Internet, declining ad sales, and an economy gone south. But the brain trust at the Inquirer and Daily News has a deeper problem: They think we still need their papers to find out what’s going on

BY STEVE VOLK

IN THE HEADY early days after Brian Tierney’s ownership group purchased the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News in 2006, one of his new employees saw him walking up Broad Street toward the paper’s headquarters. Tierney wore a mobster-loud pin-striped suit and chomped on a cigar so thick his mouth barely encompassed its girth. A cigar is, of course, never just a cigar. It’s a symbol of success or pretension to it, of a new baby born or a World Series won. Tierney appeared to have earned his cigar. In becoming the co-owner, publisher and CEO of this city’s newspapers, he had won a competitive bidding war and acquired more than just a business. Much more. “It’s legacy-building time,” he told reporters, thus conjoining the fate of the papers and his own life’s work.

Tierney offered himself up as The Man Who Would Save Philadelphia’s Newspapers at a tumultuous time. In the years just before he purchased the Inquirer and Daily News, frequent cost-cutting had become the industry norm. Employees, mostly reporters, were shed like unwanted fat. Revenue was in free fall. Philadelphia’s papers earned the Knight-Ridder chain a $100 million profit in 2004 but only $76 million in 2005, and were on course for just $50 million when Tierney purchased them the next year. But Tierney is a former advertising and public relations executive, and words like “decline” and “fall” aren’t part of his vocabulary. And so the savior walked into the Inquirer building speaking not of retrenchment, but of expansion. He said local ownership would provide an antidote to the toxic requirements of Wall Street, which demanded ever-increasing profits. And when he first took to a podium in the Inquirer building, he made a particularly grand promise: “The Next Great Era in Philadelphia Journalism,” he said, “begins today.” Legacy time.

Now, less than three years later, it’s all gone to hell. Circulation has fallen. In early 2008, Tierney warned union representatives of “a dire situation” if costs weren’t cut by 10 percent. The papers have slashed more than 400 staff members across all departments since he took over. According to Newspaper Guild representative Bill Ross, Tierney once shook up a management meeting by barking “I will not lose my fucking house over this!” And Ross says a couple of people emerged from a private meeting with the CEO claiming that he’d spoken to them, in his 12th-floor office, with a baseball bat in his hands. Ross also adds that in January, Tierney took to patrolling the parking garage, watching to see what time employees were arriving to work and asking managers about those who were late. “That’s what I’m getting calls about now,” says Ross. “He’s walking around the parking garage. If he gets hit by a car, it’ll be his own fault.” Tierney’s ownership group, Philadelphia Media Holdings, stopped making interest payments to its creditors over the summer. Thirty-five further editorial layoffs were announced in December. No one knows what tomorrow will bring — except that some tomorrow could mark the end of Philadelphia’s newspapers.

Read the full story here.

Photo-illustration by C.J. Burton from the February 2009 issue of Philadelphia magazine.

In 2007, Philly natives Becky and Kipp Fawcett started the nonprofit HelpUsAdopt.org. The five-year journey that led them there, and to their son Jake, has them fighting to change the face of adoption

BY JENNA BERGEN

THERE’S NO PAYMENT plan for adoption. That’s something Becky Fawcett found out as she sat across from her lawyer in his Doylestown office, looking down at the estimate he’d written on the page: $35,000. Becky, then 35, had already spent $82,000 on five in vitro attempts, her womb refusing her most basic, human desire: to carry a child. To have a family.

Thirty-five thousand dollars.

“What if I don’t have it?” she asked the lawyer, her face blank, calling his bluff.

He shrugged, resigned to telling this woman what he’d had to tell countless others. “You could take out a double mortgage on your house, cash in your 401K. You could put it on credit cards. …” He looked at her left hand. “That’s a nice engagement ring. You could sell it. Or you could live a childless life.”

Even though she and her husband, Kipp, had the money, the words hit Becky hard. How lucky I am, she thought, the last finely woven thread that held her together starting to unravel as she suddenly imagined all the people who didn’t have that kind of cash — a financial roadblock putting an end to bottles and birthday parties and college graduations. Appearances forgotten, she put her head down and cried.

Read the rest of “A Cause to Adopt.”

Photograph by Erin Patrice O’Brien from the Feburary 2009 issue of Philadelphia magazine.