CS 2: Dan Gross, Former Daily News Gossip Columnist

Dan Gross joined me for this show. He is the former gossip columnist for the Daily News and Philly.com, as well as the former president of the Newspaper Guild, the union that represents Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com writers and advertising staffers. His departure was interesting not only because he was a longtime Daily News employee, but also because the perception was that, as the guild president, Dan knew something about the future of the company that most others didn’t. That wasn’t the case, however-- Dan took an optional buyout to pursue other opportunities. He’s working on what’s next, and is currently doing some crisis management for a local public figure, whose name Gross has been tasked with keeping from you.

We had a good conversation about gossip and entertainment writing, and how some readers love it and others absolutely hate it. Dan broke the Flyers Dry Island story after Mike Richards and Jeff Carter were traded, and he says that the real key to that story, which Daily News editors were uncomfortable printing, was not that Richards and Carter were big partiers (something everyone already knew), but that some of their teammates were concerned about their alleged use of prescription painkillers.

Dan also talked about his confrontation with Allen Iverson and his reporting of the Scott Hartnell and Sheena Parveen sightings. We finished up by talking about the current state of Philly newspapers and their decision to separate the Inquirer and Daily News websites from P