Layoffs hit WURD staff as historic station faces conservative group’s lawsuit

For the past two years, Tonya Pendleton has hosted WURD’s midday show Reality Check, learning on the fly what it means to be a radio host in Philadelphia.

That included more than 100 interviews and spending a good amount of time in the community, including broadcasting live from a recreation center in North Philadelphia following a quadruple shooting that left two men dead.

Now she’s off the air after being swept up in cutbacks at the progressive, Black-owned radio station.

Pendleton was among four people at WURD laid off by the station Friday. Longtime producer Troy Wilmore, who had been with WURD for 18 years, was also let go, along with two other employees.

Axios was first to report the layoffs.

In a memo to employees, WURD CEO and president Sara M. Lomax said that the decision to lay off staff “was not made lightly” and that the move was intended to “ensure the station’s long-term survival.”

Lomax did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

WURD is currently involved in a lawsuit over a Black doctors directory it launched with Penn Medicine last year. A conservative healthcare nonprofit called Do No Harm is suing both in U.S. District Court in Eastern Pennsylvania, claiming that the list discriminates against white providers.

Pendleton, who is also a contributor to WHYY, was told the move was a “cost-cutting measure.” Despite losing her job at the station, she praised WURD’s role in the city, which goes beyond what people are saying on the air.

“I wish people understood the importance of having a local Black news outlet,” Pendleton said. “Before I came to WURD, I had no idea how much they do in the community. I don’t mean for the community, I mean in the community,”

WURD, a small station that broadcasts out of Fishtown, is the only Black-owned and -operated talk radio station in Pennsylvania and one of the few left in the country. The station has been on the air since 2002 but faces the same economic headwinds confronting other media organizations as listeners and advertisers shift to podcasts and digital offerings.

“Radio impacts people in a way I think is crucially important, and it informs them and reaches them in a very different way” than other types of media, Pendleton said.

Solomon Jones, the host of WURD’s morning show, is a contributing columnist for The Inquirer. It is unclear how WURD plans to program its midday show — Tiffany Bacon filled in Monday.

Last July, longtime WURD host Andrea Lawful-Sanders resigned following an interview with then-President Joe Biden.

As part of the interview, which occurred following Biden’s lackluster presidential election debate performance against Donald Trump, Lawful-Sanders was given some suggested questions by the Biden campaign. WURD’s Lomax acknowledged that the arrangement violated company policies but accused the Biden campaign of pulling “a fast one.”