Stop the presses! Ad guy embraces old media!

What is it with Pennsylvania on AdFreak today? In being the leader of a consortium that today bought the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, Brian Tierney has just become a rarity—an ad exec (or former one), who is openly and publicly embracing the future of old media—and print, no less. True, the newspapers’ Web sites are part of the $562 million buyout of the papers from McClatchy, but ultimately this deal is really about whether there are still people interested in reading newspapers, and well-heeled patrons willing to buy them once a publicly-traded conglomerate puts them on the block. While it appears from stories today at philly.com that much of the newsroom is relieved, Tierney, who will be CEO, gets low marks for his past dealings with reporters—particularly as a public relations exec who often represented the Catholic Church. In this story, Robert J. Rosenthal, former Inquirer editor, recalls, “He was all elbows and knees … and he frequently would try and bully journalists into whatever argument he wanted to make for his clients—that's what he was getting paid for. I never really saw him as someone who understood the adversarial role of the press." This could get interesting.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Credit: John Costello/Philadelphia Inquirer/KRT

May 24, 2006 | Permalink