Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Bagels With Brian

Legendary Philadelphia Public Relations Hall of Fame member (and actress) Sylvia Kauders arranged it all and billed it as "Bagels With Brian." For a few of us who are fellow Hall of Fame members it meant a morning well-spent with Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News Publisher and CEO Brian Tierney.
Brian's the kind of guy who is passionate about what he does, and it shows. This morning, Brian not only laid out his continuing vision for the Inky, Daily News and philly.com but he also discussed the challenges he's faced since he and a group of business colleagues formed Philadelphia Media Holdings, LLC and acquired the newspapers in March, 2006. One of the big problems has been the loss of employment classified advertising -- a revenue loss faced by all newspapers. But the Philly newspapers are making up for this loss in other ways and are even showing revenue and circulation gains. So, what Brian and his team are doing here in Philly is being closely watched by other big-city dailies including the New York Times.
We also got a chance to meet Inquirer Editor and Executive Vice President William K. Marimow who then allowed us to sit in on the morning editors' meeting where the makeup of tomorrow's Inquirer was (tentatively) discussed.
It was a great visit and on the way out we got a chance to chat with many of our friends at the Daily News including Michael Schefer, Dan Gross, Jenice Armstrong, Stu Bykofsky, Sandra Shea and Elmer Smith.
Meeting all these hard-working reporters and editors gave us yet another opportunity to be thankful for our cherished First Amendment freedoms.

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