Monica Yant Kinney Goes Does Her Best Stephen Colbert Impression

Monica Yant Kinney — the Inquirer columnist for the Dirty Jerz — goes nuts today on Brian Tierney, who just happens to be the guy who just agreed to buy the paper.

Seems that Tierney, a local PR whiz, didn’t like some columns that Kinney wrote about his buddy Vernon Hill, the owner of Commerce Bank. Kinney begins:

You probably heard I have a new boss. I wonder whether we’ll have lunch soon. Our last meal was so much fun.

The time: late 2002. The place: Ponzio’s. The topic of conversation: my professional interest in Commerce Bank founder Vernon Hill.

I had written a few columns about the man, his Moorestown mansion and business practices, as I might any headline-making captain of industry in the area. [...]

Hill disliked the columns. Only he didn’t tell me to knock it off, personally. Neither did his paid spokesman.

The job of shutting me up fell to Brian Tierney, the local ad man and public-relations whiz who happens to be one of Hill’s dear friends.

At lunch, Tierney made it clear he wasn’t being paid to bully me. This one, he was doing for free.

Oh, but it gets better:

It’s encouraging that the local owners are vowing to invest in the newspaper and promote it, I said. It’s reassuring they’ve publicly pledged not to meddle in editorial matters.

I just hope they realize they bought a newspaper, not a tech stock.

If we do our jobs correctly, we will inevitably aggravate and outrage Tierney, his friends and fellow investors.

Some VIP they know is bound to get caught in a scandal. Someone will get indicted.

Back then, the man complaining about coverage wasn’t also an owner of the paper. We stood up to him.

What will Tierney say the next time one of his friends asks him to have lunch with me? Where will he stand?

Fantastic. Looks like Tierney’s going to get a chance to test that “staying out of the editorial side” pledge right away.

Monica Yant Kinney | Brian Tierney, before the pledge [Inquirer]
Archives: Future of Inquirer/Daliy News

Quickies: You’re Welcome

• Hey, the old Visitors’ Center has reopened…. as the Welcome Center! How this is a big change mystifies me, but KYW 1060 has the scoop, of course. [KYW 1060]

• Speaking of our favorite radio station, Phil Neuman has left the station after 21 years, saying that management had its head up its as. As management tends to do. [Inky]

• The question that needs to be asked: What if the Inquirer’s new owners — i.e. not Brian Tierney, but the Royal Bank of Scotland — decide they’re not making enough money? [American Debate]

• Did you get to work on a train this morning? Liar. [Philly.com]

Leftovers: Journalism, Redefined

• Whoo! New era of Philadelphia journalism! Local ownership! Somebody go cover that City Hall fire! What, you’re all too busy writing a piece on the future of journalism? Oh, just leave it to the AP then. [AP/Philly.com]

• The best comment on the five pages of random accusations of liberal/conservative bias on Philly.com: “brian, just get rid of the popup ads on philly.com and i’ll consider your reign a success. they’re so 1997, yuck!” Seriously, guys. [Philly.com]

• Hooray for the power of blogging! Or, at least, the power of free Blogspot accounts. [Free Tony Smyrski]

• And, hey, if an organization dedicated to civil liberties can’t consider blocking its board from critiquing its work, then who can? [NYT]

A Q&A On The Philly Papers’ Sale

If you haven’t checked out the Philly.com today, you should. Why, there’s a story even bigger than Barbaro: The sale of the Inquirer and Daily News (and related businesses, including the Northeast Times!).

Why, you just have to click once to see a full list of stories about the big news!

Jesus, even I don’t want to read all of those stories. But, as a service to you, the reader, I did read all 58 stories and have compiled a Q&A about the sale of the papers after the jump.

More »

Leftovers: Welcome, Our New PR Overlord!

• We’re hearing…. that the Brian Tierney/Bruce Toll/etc. bid to buy the Inquirer and Daily News has gone through, and there’s a press conference at the Inquirer Building at 5 p.m. to officially announce the sale. Staff meeting to follow at 6, but you probably need some sort of special badge or ring or “job” to get in to that one. Update: Here’s a press release. [Yahoo!/McClatchy]

• As mentioned earlier, Dubya himself will be here tomorrow, helping out the campaigns of Jim Gerlach and Mike Fitzpatrick. Tickets are a thousand bucks, so, uh, start saving. [AP/Philly.com]

• Philly businesses got a pep talk today; “You, too, can get the Olympics… if you work together.” Philadelphia promptly ended its bid for the 2016 Olympics. [Inquirer]

• Nick Lachey to The Trentonian: Stay away from me! Trentonian to Nick Lachey: “Popfest headliner Nick Lachey snubbed efforts to talk to him yesterday for a pre-concert interview — that’s despite being splashed across the front of The Trentonian’s GO section last Thursday.” Oh my God, the GO section? That jerk! [Trentonian]

Leftovers: Mummery Of Years Past

• From the George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress comes this photograph of mummers in 1909 (click to enlarge). Wait, there was a time at the Mummer’s Parade before all the spectators were wearing Eagles jackets and the mummers carrying Eagles flags? Wow. [Library of Congress via Criminently, Nutsey!]

• Now that the Inquirer and the Daily News have been sold, what will happen to those plucky, talented writers who do their jobs and don’t complain and are pretty talented individuals, to boot? Here’s the scary part: We don’t know. [NYT]

• Pennsylvania, apparently, has an official, state-licensed Wine of the Month Club. Naturally, the wines are shipped to your local state store once a month, and not to somewhere a bit more convenient. [KYW 1060]

• In a book review, Malcolm Gladwell says that on average, Allen Iverson hasn’t even been the best player on his team some years. Ho ho! Good one, Mr. Gladwell! Oh… wait… you’re serious? Well, do you mean Matt Geiger or Nazr Mohammed? Or do you mean Michael Cage? [The New Yorker]

• And, finally, former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey had anonymous gay sex at Jersey rest stops, he admits in his new book. Well, so much for his new book being boring! More on this tomorrow, God willing. [AP/NBC 10]

Congratulations, ‘Daily News’! All That’s Left Are Slow, Painful Contract Negotiations!

Well hot diggity! The Daily News and Inquirer have apparently found a buyer, and his name is Brian Tierney, a local PR executive.

To put this in perspective, this is essentially the equivalent of Philadelphia Weekly being sold to TS Dominique or Betty 38EE. Except neither Dominique nor Betty allegedly threatened to ruin a reporter’s reputation.

But, actually, it’s not just Tierney (who’s in the photo); the Inqurier notes that the group expected to buy the papers, Philadelphia Media Holdings, includes these luminaties:

Investors in the group are led by Bruce E. Toll, whose brother Robert runs the Toll Bros. Inc. home-construction company, and also includes investment manager Leslie Brun, along with other local business executives whose identity the group has declined to confirm.

The group’s advisers include NewSpring Capital of King of Prussia; Doug Alexander of Internet Capital Group; the Philadelphia-based Dilworth Paxson law firm, which counts State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo (D., Phila.) among its influential lawyers; and the Smart & Associates accounting firm, among others. Bank of America, Royal Bank of Scotland, and other banks have agreed to help fund the bid.

To put this in perspective, this is like TS Dominique, Betty 38EE, Bruce Toll, Beanie Sigel, blueberry heir Anthony Dimeo, Rick Mariano, Rick Santorum, President Bush and American Apparel owner Dov Charney forming a coalition to buy PW.

Of course, Tierney — a well-known Republican and Archdiocese of Philadelphia advocate — has pledged to remain out of the newsroom and says his partners will do the same. Fair enough, of course, and hopefully he’ll stick to this promise. (For the record, Yucaipa — no offense to the Newspaper Guild, but thank God they didn’t win; I could never spell this company’s name right — founder Ron Burkle is a buddy o’ Bill Clinton’s.)

What does this all mean? Probably nothing, except that it’s good McClatchey found a buyer that says he’s going to keep both newspapers up and running. Hey, you can only get so much material from Metro — I need the Daliy News.

Deal to buy Inquirer may be near [Inky]
Source: Local group near deal for News, Inquirer [Daily News]
Local newspaper buyers: Be careful what you wish for? [Attytood]

Blogicized: Making And Taking

• Ah, yes, the dream everyone has when they drive by Trenton on Route 1 or they leave its train station: What if Trenton were suddenly on fire? Just, keep it in your fantasies, please, lest someone get hurt. Or sue. [TinaPoPo]

• Yay! Let’s meet the bidders that are hoping to one day run the Daily News, starting with the owner of another Daily News. [Attytood]

• If you combined The Sopranos and Philadelphia’s hard-on for giving away money to those who don’t need it, you’d get this. With bonus Navy Yard reference! Hey, I thought that was going to be the Olympic Village? [(1) Philebrity (2) Welcome to Phillyville]

The Bids Are Rolling In! Wait, And Another! And Another!

Okay, so I was all ready to type up a post saying that PNI — the parent company of both the Inquirer and Daily News, which McClatchy is selling after buying Knight Ridder — had gotten only two bids, and then another story moved across the wire saying it had gotten three bids, then I went and got a sandwich, then I came back to as many as six companies who could be buying the papers.

Dow Jones is reporting that these groups have submitted official bids:

• Canadian publisher Black Press Ltd, with investment firm Onex Corp.
• Texas investor Christopher M. Harte
• Philadelphia businessmen Brian Tierney and Bruce Toll, and others
• Yucaipa, paired with the Newspaper Guild
• Possibly the New York Daily News, but maybe not. They dunno. It seems like they didn’t. But maybe they did.

MediaNews may make a bid, but declined to comment to Reuters on if it did or not. Which probably means it didn’t.

So what does this all mean? Well, not much, since these are the groups we all knew might put in bids for the paper. But since it seems like everyone put in a bid, who knows, there could be even more. Heck, it might come up that I made a bid for the papers. (I’m partnering with Bain.)

Bids roll in at McClatchy for Philly newspapers [Reuters/ABCNews.com]

Double Your ‘Daily News’ Fun

Now that the future for the Daily News is a little brighter than it once was — at least, as long as some Canadians don’t buy it — the paper appears ready to move on in a soon-to-be post-Knight Ridder world.

And, yesterday, in an article about the future of newspapers/the Internet/readership/etc., the Inquirer noted this upcoming feature of the paper:

The Daily News in the next several weeks plans to add a crime blog and an online afternoon edition with news on traffic, entertainment and other information, said Frank Burgos, the newspaper’s editorial page editor and new media editor.

They already have that crime blog. But an afternoon edition! With news on traffic and entertainment! I think the collective heart of Philadelphia just skipped a beat.

The future of papers? [Inquirer]
Philly Confidential [Daily News]