Philadelphia Will Do, Even More Watered Down

As you may have read elsewhere, it appears Philadelphia Weekly is for sale. In case you can’t tell by the PW logo at left, the countless links to Philadelphia Weekly and the domain “philadelphiaweekly” in the URL, this blog is a part of Philadelphia Weekly.

We — and by “we” I mean “I” — don’t know much about any potential sale, as the guys on the other side of the office have apparently kept everyone hush-hush about the whole situation. I pretty much know as much about the potential buyers as you do. Maybe Ron Burkle will buy the paper! (Remember him?) Maybe the Inquirer and Daily News unions will chip in to buy ol’ P-Dub? How about you? Do you have money? Do you want to own a newspaper?

The first thought that popped into my head was, of course: New Times. (The chain renamed itself after buying the Village Voice; it’s now called Village Voice Media.) This is a newspaper chain whose executive editor told The Phoenix: “I expect original reporting[,] not merely some lazy form of print blogging.” This gives me some hope; if he doesn’t want lazy blogging in print, maybe he wants lazy online blogging. And it takes hard work to get this lazy. You can’t just plug in anybody for laziness like this.

Then, this morning, there was this bombshell from Dan Gross (after the jump):

Informed observers speculate that Philadelphia Media Holdings, which owns the Daily News and Inqwaster, is among bidders for the Philadelphia Weekly, which has quietly gone on the market.

“All I can say is no comment,” PMH CEO Brian Tierney told us yesterday when asked if the company was bidding on the paper. A recent Inqwaster report said that nondisclosure agreements were signed between Review Publishing, owner of PW, and potential bidders.

Gasp! Philadelphia Weekly needs to be preceded by a “the”? Are you sure? I think it’s more natural to do without it. For my money, “is among bidders for Philadelphia Weekly” sounds better than “is among bidders for the Philadelphia Weekly.” Right? Apparently this is how Metro staffers refer to their paper, too. (They call it “Metro“, not “the Metro” or “the Philadelphia Weekly.” Why they’d be calling their paper Philadelphia Weekly is beyond me.)

Oh, right, the other thing. Indeed! Fresh off saving money by laying off workers and buying several private jets, boats and islands with the savings and the Phillycars.com hip hop ad campaign, it appears Brian Tierney and the rest of Philadelphia Media Holdings are looking for more newspaper adventures.

Hmm… Philadelphia Will Do owned by the guy who owns the Inquirer. I wonder… hmm, okay.

As you may know, the Inquirer recently launched Inquirer Express, “the most convenient way to get your news.” In order to impress our new possible corporate overlords, I’ve compiled a new edition of Philadelphia Will Do, Philadelphia Will Do EXPRESS, which summarizes all the top stories on PWD summarized from other media outlets and tosses them into one convenient package. Click to enlarge.

If you’ll look here, I think this combines the things Philadelphia Will Do is known for — puppies (aww), Milton Street, Kerri-Lee Halkett, the word “fuck,” lame jokes about not-so-funny headlines, self-deprecation, Northeast Philly — and the best of corporate media: Giant ads for a bank. I also included the Cash 5 results in this pilot edition, because, y’know, lots of people play the numbers.

As you may have seen, newspapers — say, oh, I don’t know, let’s just pick two at random here, the Inquirer and Daily News — have tried everything they can to sound edgy and hip and young and with it, in the process sounding neither edgy nor hip nor young nor with it. I believe the font the word “EXPRESS” is in contributes to that cause nicely.

And, much like how the Inky Express is on the back of the sports section — today, it’s Section E — I’ve made PWD Express equally easy to get to with the convenient URL. Yay!

Business business [Inquirer, 2nd item]
Could PMH be purchasing PW? [Daily News, 2nd item]