This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

Sure, finance and technology pay well, but have you considered a career as a sports mascot? You might – once you learn that Gritty, the shaggy orange mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers, earns a whopping $250,000 annually – just slightly less than the $254,000 salary of the nation’s highest-paid governor, Pennsylvania’s own Josh Shapiro.

Just a week after Pittsburghers learned they were losing their storied daily newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and its sister publication, the Pittsburgh City Paper, Trib Total Media came to the rescue of Western Pennsylvania news junkies – at least for two days a week. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is launching a weekend print publication covering Pittsburgh and the Allegheny County region, “ensuring that Pittsburgh has a newspaper of record,” according to the press release.

The cultural heart of downtown Philadelphia, South Broad Street’s Avenue of the Arts, is getting a verdant makeover – welcome news after it lost a longtime anchor, the University of the Arts, in 2024. The avenue’s eponymous nonprofit just broke ground on a decade-long, $150 million project that will transform the boulevard’s infrastructure and traffic patterns – including newly landscaped sidewalks and medians – and eventually install public art, outdoor seating and shade trees.

SEPA’s head hoagie honcho got some bad news – and some competition – this week. Wawa is closing another Philly-based store after its digital-order-only trial run didn’t pan out. This comes as cross-state rival Sheetz announced it will open its first-ever location in Montgomery County – across the street from a Wawa. Let the convenience clash continue. 

The Washington County Republican Party has soured on state Sen. Camera Bartolotta. In a Facebook post, the party revealed that members voted 21-3 in favor of a motion calling for a no-confidence vote in Bartolotta, citing her comments last year on immigrants in Charleroi that the local party claimed “undermined President Trump in the middle of his reelection campaign.” The organization also expressed concern about Bartolotta’s support for legislation that created mail-in voting in Pennsylvania and argued that the state senator “has not acted in the best interest of Washington County.”

Attorney General Dave Sunday this week announced charges against 25-year-old Zairre Hamlett of Philadelphia for allegedly trafficking ghost guns, a term that refers to firearms that lack serial numbers. Hamlett was charged with six felonies, including illegal transfer of firearms, and had bail set at $600,000. Law enforcement found a 3D-printed gun and materials to print additional firearms at his home.