Outlet profile

Philadelphia Weekly

U.S. alternative/local, mixed editorial history

Owned byPhiladelphia Weekly Holdings, Ltd., reportedly tied to an undisclosed media company based in Puerto Rico (acquired late 2021 from prior owner Dan McDonough Jr.)

FundingAdvertising and local business sponsorships typical of a free alt-weekly, plus digital ad revenue; no public subscription paywall

On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

The paper traces its roots to 1971 as The Welcomat, a South Philadelphia-area sister publication, before being renamed Philadelphia Weekly in 1995. It was owned by Review Publishing from 1986 to 2015, then sold to Broad Street Media, and in 2016 acquired by distribution executive Richard Donnelly. In late 2018, businessman Dan McDonough Jr. bought the paper and by 2020 announced a deliberate pivot to a conservative, 'contrarian' editorial identity — a striking departure for an urban alt-weekly, drawing national attention including a Philadelphia magazine piece dubbing it an attempt to become 'Philly's Fox News.' That effort included a widely criticized 'guess the murders' promotional contest and was reversed within about a year, with new editorial leadership explicitly repositioning the paper back toward its decades-long identity as a local arts-and-news institution. McDonough sold the outlet in late 2021 to an undisclosed media company reported to be based in Puerto Rico, and current ownership transparency remains limited. Today it functions primarily as a local Philadelphia culture, arts, and community-news outlet rather than a heavily politicized publication, though its brief right-leaning experiment remains part of its recent editorial record.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-09-28; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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