BEDFORD, Mass. — Philadelphia Inquirer co-owner Lewis Katz was killed along with six other people in a fiery plane crash in Massachusetts, just days after reaching a deal that many hoped would end months of infighting at the newspaper and help restore it to its former glory.
BEDFORD, Mass. — Philadelphia Inquirer co-owner Lewis Katz was killed along with six other people in a fiery plane crash in Massachusetts, just days after reaching a deal that many hoped would end months of infighting at the newspaper and help restore it to its former glory.
The 72-year-old businessman’s Gulfstream corporate jet ran off the end of a runway, plunged down an embankment and erupted in a fireball during a takeoff attempt Saturday night at Hanscom Field outside Boston, authorities said. There were no survivors.
Katz was returning to New Jersey from a gathering at the home of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Also killed was a next-door neighbor of Katz’s, Anne Leeds, a 74-year-old retired preschool teacher he had invited along, and Marcella Dalsey, the director of Katz’s son’s foundation.
The identities of the other victims weren’t immediately released. Nancy Phillips, Katz’s longtime partner and city editor at the Inquirer, was not aboard.
Investigators said it was too soon to say what caused the crash.
Katz made his fortune investing in parking lots and the New York Yankees’ cable network. He once owned the NBA’s New Jersey Nets and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils and in 2012 became a minority investor in the Inquirer.
Last Tuesday, Katz and former cable magnate Harold H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest struck a deal to gain full control of the Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com by buying out their fellow owners for $88 million — an agreement that ended a very public feud over the Inquirer’s business and journalism direction.
Lenfest said Sunday that the deal will be delayed but will still go through.
“We’ll lose his expertise, but the paper will continue because we both intended to put a new CEO in charge of the day-to-day operations,” Lenfest said. Katz’s son, Drew, will take his father’s seat on the board of directors, Lenfest said.
When bidding on the company, Katz and Lenfest vowed to fund in-depth journalism and retain the Inquirer’s editor, Bill Marimow.
“It’s going to be a lot of hard work. We’re not kidding ourselves. It’s going to be an enormous undertaking,” Katz said then, noting that advertising and circulation revenues had fallen for years. “Hopefully, (the Inquirer) will get fatter.”
The fight over the city’s two major newspapers broke out last year when one of the co-owners, Democratic powerbroker George Norcross, moved to fire Marimow. Katz and Lenfest went to court to keep Marimow, then bought out Norcross and his allies.
The Inquirer has changed hands five times in eight years, and like many other newspapers, it has seen a downturn in business that has forced it to cut staff, close bureaus and scale back its ambitions.