The Wrath of Robert

Journal Register CEO Robert Jelenic spouts off at a magazine journalist writing an article criticizing his newspaper empire.

by Christopher McDougall

Journal Register Company (JRC) CEO Robert Jelenic has raised a lot of hackles among past and present employees of his burgeoning newspaper empire.

Now he's pissing off the national press.

"I've never dealt with a newspaper company that was so paranoid," says Mary Walton, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who interviewed Jelenic and a number of other small-paper tycoons for an article on the new breed of newspaper owners for the May issue of American Journalism Review (AJR). The rants, she says, also included Jelenic calling her "ignorant" and a "piranha."

Not only was Jelenic constantly and inexplicably angry, says Walton, but downright dishonest: "I caught him in two outright lies."

JRC officials refused comment.

Coming at a time when three Philadelphia-area papers are locked in contract negotiations with JRC that, if push comes to strike, would knock out local newspapers in three counties, this is not the sign of the "kinder, gentler JRC" that union reps were hoping to see. Recently, Norristown Times-Herald workers voted to reject one JRC offer, and the Pottstown Mercury and Delaware County Daily Times are beginning preliminary talks in an atmosphere that Daily Times rep Adam Taylor has called "open, but wary."

JRC, the Trenton-based newspaper conglomerate that effectively made itself The Voice of Suburban Philadelphia last year by buying up 10 more small papers in the area, giving it a total of 13 around downtown Philly, has been blasted by current and former employees as a heartless corporation that bullies workers and sacrifices newspaper quality for high profits.

Recently, however, word of a more generous and employee-friendly JRC has been spreading. According to staff at two new JRC purchases—the Delaware County Daily Times and the Pottstown Mercury—there has been no sign since the takeover this past summer of the mass layoffs that hit the Norristown Times-Herald, nor the temper tantrums and threats by Jelenic that JRC workers from Connecticut to Ohio regularly record on a Yahoo! message board devoted to the company.

But in her long and otherwise academic-sounding AJR article, Walton departs from her generally cool, detached tone as she writes about JRC. When Jelenic makes his entrance, it's like she's describing the dragon under the Munsters' steps. "Flashes of his ego and temper are almost immediately on display," she begins. In the passage that follows, Walton depicts Jelenic as he "fumes" and brandishes papers and laughs sardonically.

"I've never dealt with a newspaper company that was so paranoid," says Mary Walton, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who interviewed Jelenic.

He comes across as so volatile that he has trouble finishing sentences. When Walton tries to ask an innocuous question about whether, as some experts predict, JRC's parent company might sell off some of its papers, Jelenic answers in a burst of staccato outrage. "He basically called me stupid," is how Walton recalls it later. "He'd say things like, 'Anyone who asks that question shows how ignorant they are.'" In her story, she records his answer like this: "It's so wrong and ludicrous that anybody who says anything like that.… it just shows that they have no financial acumen whatsoever. Zero.… So wrong that it's laughable… "

Despite the antagonistic atmosphere, Walton continues to bear down on two key criticisms: the accusations that JRC turns out crap papers and guts news staff to increase profit. She notes that even one of the newspapers that Jelenic waved before her as a point of special pride devotes half the front page to news of a shopping mall and "reads like promotional copy."

Jelenic fires back two combative responses: a) a fellow publisher told him JRC's flagship paper was one of the best papers in Connecticut; and b) his harsh layoffs at the Norristown Times-Herald were necessary because the previous owner was "a very eccentric millionaire" who left the paper bleeding red ink. He doesn't explain, however, why he nevertheless paid a whopping $30 million for a business supposedly going under.

Finally, it was over. "The interview lasts nearly two hours, and Jelenic appears to hate every question," Walton writes.

Shortly after, she discovered that he answered at least two of them with fibs. When she contacted the publisher who'd allegedly praised JRC's New Haven paper, he sounded "flummoxed," Walton writes, and makes it clear he said nothing of the kind to Jelenic. "That's the last thing I would have said," Andrew Barnes, CEO of the St. Petersburg Times, tells Walton.

Then, she tracks down the former controller for the Times-Herald, who flat-out refutes Jelenic's assertion that the paper was a money-burner.

"In none of those fiscal years did the paper suffer a net loss in overall income or cash flow," Tony Coyer tells Walton. "Indeed, in the five years before the recession in 1991, the Times-Herald averaged nearly $1.5 million a year in profits."

As if anticipating what Walton was discovering, it wasn't long before JRC got back in touch and tried to flex a little muscle. "While I was writing, I got a call from [JRC Vice President] Jean Clifton, who complained about my 'attitude,' and told me I was 'like a piranha for the negative,'" says Walton. "It came across as downright intimidation."