The Philadelphia Inquirer–the newspaper whose owners are bankrupt and whose staff has endured wide layoffs and whose remaining staff members have foregone raises–has been paying Rick Santorum $1,750 for each column the former senator writes for the paper, according to documents the Inquirer filed to…the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
Indeed. Soak in the irony. As Editor & Publisher points out, the per-column fee–Santorum writes two a month for the Inquirer–earns the ousted legislator “over $45,000 for the year.”
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.