A gift to Temple will create the first endowed editor position at its student newspaper
Jack and Monica Pinkowski are avid newspaper readers and wanted to help Temple's student newspaper at a time when print journalism has struggled. Jack's Dad started a newspaper in Montgomery County.
Jack Pinkowski relished his time as a photojournalist for Temple University’s student newspaper when he was enrolled there in the 1960s.
And he always admired the work of his father, the late Edward Pinkowksi, an historian and author who founded a small newspaper in the Montgomery County borough of Bridgeport.
This month, Pinkowski, a 1968 Temple grad, and his wife Monica gave Temple a $1.25 million gift, a portion of which will for the first time endow the editor-in-chief position for The Temple News, as well as increase other staff salaries, and pay for some story-related travel and new equipment.
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Pinkowksi said the need for journalists has never been more important and laments the struggles print journalism has faced.
“We hope to show it a lifeline, give it some support to encourage people to go into that as a field of endeavor,” said Pinkowski, 78, of Plantation, Fla. “This named editorship is a tribute to my father for starting a newspaper and having a lifetime as a critical mind that searched for facts and put them together and brought stories to the enjoyment of people.”
Of the gift, $250,000 will be used to create an endowment for the student newspaper, and the other $1 million will fund scholarships of up to $10,000 per academic year for students to study at Temple’s Rome campus. Applicants must have knowledge, coursework or a commitment to promoting Polish or Italian studies, history, or culture.
The Pinkowskis made their money by investing in and managing real estate as well as through other careers.
The couple both worked in businesses with global ties — Jack as an importer of furniture and Monica as an importer of gourmet foods to restaurants — and saw the merit in global study. They also both attended a study abroad program for adults at Temple Rome in 2024.
Given the federal government’s policies affecting foreign students, Pinkowski said he thought it was important to support the Rome campus so that students have an alternative way to attend an American university.
Temple President John Fry said he especially likes that the gift is so personal and that it’s widening access to students to participate in both studying on the Rome campus and working for the student newspaper.
“These are two really important experiences that many students have to forgo and I think the Pinkowskis are making both of those possible,” Fry said. “Its meaning and impact are significant.”
The gift comes as the college prepares to close a record fundraising year led by a record $55 million gift from alumnus Christopher Barnett in October and a large gift in April from alumna Jane Creamer Sullivan and her late husband, Thomas J. Sullivan, to start its new honors college.
A boost for the Temple News
John DiCarlo, managing director of student media and adviser to the Temple News, said its portion of the Pinkowski gift will be incredibly important in supporting the 37-staff member newspaper, which last academic year ran on a $115,596 budget that largely covers salaries and print costs. Most of the costs were covered by the university, with the newspaper responsible for raising $23,500 through ad revenue and other means. If the publication exceeds that goal — which it did last year, raising over $29,000 — it can funnel the additional money back into operations, DiCarlo said.
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The new endowment, DiCarlo said, will bring in an additional $10,000 to $12,000 annually, depending on its earnings.
Incoming senior Sienna Conaghan, 20, who will be the inaugural Edward Pinkowski Editor-in-Chief, said she is grateful for the funding, which will cover her approximate $5,400 salary. And she’s glad that salaries for other staffers can get boosted, too.
“We’re asking them to do full-time jobs on a college student’s budget and a college student’s schedule,” DiCarlo said. “It takes a lot out of them because they really care.”
Conaghan, a journalism major from West Yellowstone, Mont., estimates she spends about 30 hours a week on Temple News work. She freelanced freshman year, was assistant sports editor sophomore year, and worked as co-sports editor last year.
The experience, said Conaghan, who plans to pursue a career in sports journalism, is more important than the paycheck, but the money helps.
“It has really been everything,” Conaghan said of her Temple News work. “I think I’ve learned so much from working at the Temple News, from how to be a journalist and also just how to be an adult and a person.”
The Pinkowskis initially gave a $6,000 gift to the Temple News in 2023 to help it reach a fundraising goal. The college wanted to be able to pay student journalists a little more because some were having to take on second jobs to generate more income, DiCarlo said. At that time, he said, he had no idea the couple would return with such a large gift three years later; it is the largest gift Temple News has ever received.
“Monica and I are avid readers and avid followers of print journalism,” said Jack Pinkowski, a graduate of Philadelphia’s Central High School.
Pinkowski said his father decided to start the now-defunct Bridgeport South Side Press in 1950 because the community didn’t have a local paper. He also wrote history books about the local area, using skills he developed as a journalist, Pinkowski said.
The Pinkowskis have had other career experience in addition to real estate and import businesses. He was a general contractor and wedding photographer early on and later spent 18 years as an associate professor of public administration at Nova Southeastern University’s school of business and entrepreneurship in Florida. And she was a flight attendant at one time and as a child grew up working in a family traveling carnival business in Missouri — which helped pay for her education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Jack Pinkowski said the common thread in their endeavors has been “inquisitiveness and intellectual curiosity and the ability to take something where there’s nothing and make something of it.”
Both Temple officials and the Pinkowskis hope their gift will motivate others.
“I do believe that other people pay attention to that, and it makes them say, well, maybe they can do something as well,” Jack Pinkowski said.
