The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Philadelphia Inquirer is a daily newspaper in Philadelphia, founded on Monday, June 1, 1829, as the Pennsylvania Inquirer. Since 2016 it has been owned by a tax-exempt institute created at the request of H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest by the Philadelphia Foundation. Since June 2026 it has reported the Olney House Investigation into women connected to the pornographer R.C. Horsch, and its files from 1969 to 1975 record the closing of his Underground Cinema 16 and the cancellation of his film Black Mass.¹²³⁴

Annenberg

Moses Annenberg announced in 1936 that he had bought the paper for four million dollars, with the assumption of 6.8 million dollars in debt. His son Walter Annenberg inherited the business, and in 1957 bought the Philadelphia Daily News for three million dollars from the Philadelphia builder Matt McCloskey. In 1969 the two papers were sold for 55 million dollars to John S. Knight's company, Knight Newspapers, which later merged with Ridder Publications to form Knight Ridder.¹

Tierney, the Hedge Funds, and the 2012 Group

Investors led by the public relations executive Brian P. Tierney bought the papers in 2006 for 515 million dollars. Hedge funds led by Alden Global Capital and Angelo, Gordon and Company bought the company out of bankruptcy in 2010 for 139 million dollars. In April 2012 a local group led by Lewis Katz and George E. Norcross III, with Lenfest, Krishna P. "Kris" Singh, William P. Hankowsky, and Joseph Buckelew, agreed to pay 55 million dollars for the papers and their website, the same price Walter Annenberg had received in 1969.⁵ In May 2014 Lenfest and Katz won the company at auction for 88 million dollars, outbidding their co-owner Norcross and his associates.²

The Lenfest Institute

On January 12, 2016, Lenfest announced that he had donated the Inquirer, the Daily News, and philly.com to a newly created tax-exempt organization, the Institute for Journalism in New Media, operating under the TPF Special Assets Fund of the Philadelphia Foundation, and would contribute 20 million dollars to its endowment. The operating company, Philadelphia Media Network, was converted to a public benefit corporation and remained a self-governing, for-profit company. "Of all the things I've done, this is the most important. Because of the journalism," Lenfest said. The foundation's president, Pedro Ramos, said: "We're not getting into the newspaper business," and "In a democracy, great cities need and depend on quality journalism."²⁶

Coverage of the Horsch Cases

On October 30, 1969, the paper reported that the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections had ordered Cinema 16 closed.³ On February 28, 1975, it reported that Black Mass had been cancelled at the Arcadia "after reported pressure by the Philadelphia Archdiocese" and would be shown at the Bandbox Theater.⁴ From June 2026 its reporters, among them Ellie Rushing, Barbara Laker, Max Marin, and Ryan W. Briggs, reported the search of the house on West Chew Avenue, the prosecutions of Eugene Horsch, R.C. Horsch's access to the crematorium of the Garzone Funeral Home, and his 2009 conviction for luring a child. On August 28, 2026, the paper reported, citing unnamed sources, that investigators believed a video showed Horsch killing a woman.⁷⁸