Exec exits papers to become head of N.Y. Lottery

Gordon Medenica, whose expertise in newspaper acquisition helped guide a local investment group headed by advertising and public-relations executive Brian Tierney to buy the

Daily News,

the

Inquirer

and philly.com, is leaving Philadelphia Media Holdings to become director of the New York Lottery.

Tierney, chief executive officer of PMH - which operates the papers, the Web site and several community newspapers - said yesterday that Medenica, PMH executive vice president, would depart at the end of the month.

Medenica, formerly head of strategic planning for the New York Times Co., advised the Tierney group in its bid to purchase the papers and Web site last year. Afterward he oversaw news operations, among other duties. He was named executive vice president last November.

Tierney said Medenica "was key to helping me and our investors put together the deal" to buy the papers and Web site.

"He brought a tremendous amount of knowledge and expertise from his days as head of strategic planning," at the New York Times, Tierney said, and later as an adviser in newspaper acquisiton to the Blackstone Group, an asset manager and financial adviser.

Medenica worked at the Times in the 1980s and '90s, during the 1993 acquistion of the Boston Globe, at the time "the biggest deal ever in the newspaper industry," he said.

He later became group publisher for Times sports magazines. He was president and CEO of Dorna USA, a sports-marketing company, from 1999 to 2001, going on to advise the Blackstone Group on the possible acquistion of Knight Ridder, then-owner of the Daily News and Inquirer.

It was then that Tierney contacted him to advise his investment group on buying the papers, Medenica said.

Medenica said yesterday he was leaving with "some mixed emotions."

He said his experiences here were "hugely rewarding - the energy, the excitement, the very long odds that we faced in doing the deal in the first place, then having to deal with incredibly difficult business conditions and really stabilizing the organization."

He said he's looking forward to a new challenge.