This Man’s Son Earns a Fortune. Who Pays Him and for What?

For many years, the Marczewskis’ portal claimed to be independent of those in power. Unofficially, however, people said that the authorities were pumping large amounts of money into the editorial office—large in relation to the readership of the Marczewskis’ portal. According to statistics available online, in 2024 the Marczewskis’ portal had only 36% of the readership of istotne.pl*.

When we asked municipal and county institutions about spending on so-called promotion, almost all of them delayed providing answers. We knew, however, that the local authorities were buying advertisements on the Marczewskis’ portal. They also bought interviews in which journalists asked interviewees questions they already knew in advance. The younger Marczewski even argued that this was a modern form of journalism—the client pays for an interview with himself, while readers, when questions are being collected, are not informed that it will be promotional content. In any event, the promotion turned out to be poor, as the interviews had an average of 300 views on YouTube.

Two months after sending our public-information questions, we finally had all the data. Institutions subordinate to the local authorities, as well as the authorities themselves, spent more than PLN 173,000 on Marczewski’s services.

The largest amount—more than PLN 69,000—was paid by the Municipal Office headed by Mayor Piotr Roman (this amount also includes the famous interviews with the mayor, financed with taxpayers’ money). The second-largest payer is Bolesławiec County, which spent more than PLN 68,000. Unlike his colleague at City Hall, County Head Tomasz Gabrysiak did not buy an interview with himself.

Below is the full list of money collected by Marcin Marczewski (who works daily for IBM Polska and is also editor-in-chief of the Kraków editorial office of the portal writing about Bolesławiec). How much of it goes to the man on the cover, Kazimierz Marczewski, Marcin’s father? And how much goes to Bernard Łętowski, who seems to have worked for nearly every editorial office in the area and still poses as a journalist independent of the authorities? We do not know, because this is not public information, and it is a secret kept by Marcin Marczewski, who operates from Kraków.

* data comes from the SimilarWeb website. The full list is available at https://bolecistotne.pl/