Larry Orkus, man of steel
Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 07:30AM 
Larry Orkus, center, poses like a peacock with Moe and Curly in the new Reading Eagle printing plant. This photo was taken approximately one year before the building was imploded to make way for a parking lot.Ten amazing facts you did not know about Larry R. Orkus, associate publisher of the Reading Eagle, a man who sees things normal men don't.
1. Because the paper needed a place to stuff its inserts, Larry acquired a distribution center at 2nd and Chestnut, along a flood plane, and stored one-of-a-kind archival data there. On June 30, 2006, the Schuylkill River flooded. Reading Eagle Company carried little or no flood insurance.
2. In 2005, right before the newspaper industry began its death rattle, Larry convinced publisher Bill Flippin to mortgage the company to the hilt and buy a new $30 million printing press and distribution plant, which, after cost overruns due to Larry's meddling, swelled to a reported $42 million.
3. Perhaps fearing the contractor would receive a kickback from his steel supplier, Larry insisted on negotiating the steel contract himself, from his office. He locked in a price...whereupon the price of steel plummeted.
4. Because the new press was coming from Germany, Larry figured he should lock in the exchange rate, too. He did, when the dollar was near its lowest point against the Euro. You don't need much imagaination to figure out what happened next.
5. Air-conditioning purchases? Guess who? (Expect global warming to quickly accelerate to the point where air-conditioning in Reading will become superfluous.)
6. As it turned out, the new Koenig & Bauer AG Colora Berliner press, widely touted as state-of-the-art machinery that would operate 24/7, can only print on flimsy newsprint, not the classy, glossy stock Boscov's demanded. The Eagle's major advertiser took its commercial printing business elsewhere.
7. Totally paranoid after the Eagle laid off 50 people just two months after "his" new facility opened, Larry had a cable modem installed in his office so he could bypass the company network to foil wrathful employees from hacking his e-mail.
8. Larry once convinced this blogger not to quit after he had submitted his resignation. (Long story; another day.)
9. (This spot is reserved for past and present Eagle staffers to post their favorite Larry facts, in the comments section, anonymously, of course.)
10. And perhaps most amazing of all...HE STILL HAS HIS JOB!!!!
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Reader Comments (16)
Wow! I thought Harry Deitz was the epitome of douchebaggery.
Oh, yeah, I should add the generic "sources say" in front of some of the entries, since I do rely on tipsters providing information for these posts. If Larry disputes any of the listings, I will happily provide a prominent forum for his rebuttals.
Goofs like this are why papers are failing. There better not be any fricking bailout.
Judging by the blurry, lousy quality of all the colored photos and images in the Eagle, Orkus must also be trying to run the printing press himself.
With this group of yo yos running the company, can bankruptcy be far around the corner?
The leaders in Editorial run a close second in the race for top yo yo.
The bottom line is......he still has his job....must be doing something right? Oh and I love peacocks they are a very classy bird.
I'm a current newsroom employee and I can tell you that morale is absolutely in the dumps. I don't see if getting any better. Quality is definitely being affected because everyone is spending a good portion of their jobs doing clerical stuff, whcih seems to get the highest priority since they laid off the entire newsroom support staff.
Perhaps when Sovereign Bank starts running the show, they can lend some clerical help.
Little Larry Orkus filed a lawsuit against Mercedes after his wife crashed her car.
Apparently the airbag that deployed to save her life caused permanent hearing damage according to him.
He's nothing more than a little man with a little penis and a big Napoleon complex.
Bill Flippin is the fool who's being parted from his money by this sneaky little sleazebag.
He lives in a world of litigation.
Larry Orkus has failed at everything he's ever tried.
He's a failed businessman. His qualifications for running a newspaper include running a clothing store into the ground and failing as a motivational speaker.
I laugh myself to sleep some nights thinking about how stupid Bill Flippin is for hiring Orkus in the first place.
He deserves everything that happens to him.
The incompetence and political complicity of the Reading Eagle ownership and managment (and sychophantic reporters) is finally coming home to roost. The Reading Eagle, unlike what a real newspaper is supposed to do, has done more to conceal the sins of the corporate, while collar gangsters that have controlled Reading since Karen Miller set up her political whore shop in City Hall, than any Soviet propoganda machine. Look how Karen Miller always has a cushy job since being Reading's mayor. A good old whore like her, who opened up the city taxpayers veins to these corporate blood suckers, always gets taken care of, as she will always kneel for them.
The new motto for the Eagle newsroom; "The floggings will continue until morale improves."
A three-step plan for bailing out the Eagle, helping the former employees and benefitting the entire target audience of the paper:
1. fire Orkus
2. rehire staff (paying them with the $ Orkus now gets)
3. revamp editorial policy to make way for real reporting/stop the ass-kissing (aka be a real paper with no hands in anyone's pockets).
Sovereign Bank isn't running anything. They got bought out by Santander and the name Sovereign is little more than a name at this point.
I was at the Eagle in the early 90s when Orkus showed up as a consultant. Interestingly, one of the things he told Flipper and his merry band of idiots was that the company had too many "lifers" who cost the company too much money because they goit higher salaries and acquired too much vacation time. He recommended they begin hiring people from outside the county figuring they would be more likely to move on quicker. Of course, Orkus himself decided to stay, weasled an associate publisher title out of pea-brained Bill Flippin and has grown fat -- literally -- in nearly 20 years on the company tit -- thereby becoming exactly the kind of employee he warned against. Of course, Bill ate it all up. What a stupid fuck.
What a cockroach!