Bonuses for Quitting

In Philadelphia, nearly everybody agrees that the Inquirer has a knowing way with a dollar. Owned by the shrewd, multisided Triangle Publications (Seventeen, TV Guide, Morning Telegraph) of the Annenberg family, its morning paper (circ. 604,977) is the nation's fifth largest daily and its Sunday edition (circ. 1,108,209) is Philly's biggest, also ranks fifth in the land. But last week the Inquirer put the finishing touches on a financial deal that seemed entirely out of character: it was paying staffers bonuses to quit.

Behind the bonuses-for-quitting policy was an effort to pare down the Inquirer's bulging head count--more than" 700 editorial and office employees. After an American Newspaper Guild strike last summer (TIME, June 23; July 21) in which job security on the overstaffed Inquirer was a major issue, management and guild agreed that to anyone who resigned or retired in the last half of 1958 the paper would pay a bonus of one week's pay for every year of employment, plus full severance pay (maximum: 31 weeks). The plan worked. In all, 142 employees quit, including 37 editorial staffers.

But if the Inquirer management had expected to clear out only its deadwood, it lost more than it asked for. Many of its best men walked out--with as much as $12,000 in bonus and severance pay. Among those that left: respected Medical Editor Joseph Nolen, Rewritemen Kos Semonski and John St. George Joyce, both nominees for Philadelphia Press Association awards for 1958. In all, the paper poured out an estimated $400,000 in resignation pay.

However efficiently the Inquirer's head count has been brought down, rival newsmen wonder privately if the paper has not spent good money to get rid of good men. But the Inquirer professes pleasure with the results. The resignations, said Stewart Hooker, director of personnel and labor relations, "have made a staff reduction of about the size we told the guild initially we felt we should have."

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