Tierney team marks the First Year

IT'S BEEN one year since former advertising executive Brian Tierney, backed by a group of local investors, took the helm of the city's two major newspapers with a pledge to begin a "new era in Philadelphia journalism."

So far it's been one hell of a ride.

Since his group put down $562 million in cash and pension liabilities for the Philadelphia Daily News, The Philadelphia Inquirer and other publications, Chief Executive Officer Tierney has certainly kept busy.

Tierney has launched marketing campaigns, hired a new slate of executives - including an online guru to revamp the papers' Web site, Philly.com - and celebrated a slight increase in the Inquirer's circulation, a boast few papers can make at the moment.

He's also weathered a national decline in print advertising, contentious contract talks that almost led to a strike, and a round of layoffs at the Inquirer.

Still, Tierney remains ebullient as he talks about his work thus far and his plans for the future. He sat down with the Daily News this week to chat about what he's done and what's up next.

Here are some excerpts from the conversation:

Q: What would you call your biggest accomplishments of the last year?

Tierney: I think that I'm real pleased about [the increase in the Inquirer's] circulation. That's a real tangible thing. Touch wood, we expect to be net positive with the Daily News, God willing, in the fall.

Our Web traffic is up almost 50 percent. We've gone from 20 million page views a month to 30 million page views a month.

Q: Is there one single change since you've been here that you can point to as the most significant?

Tierney: I think the circulation thing. I think attracting great new talent - I think bringing people like Mark Frisby in, who just became the publisher of the Daily News, is a huge thing. Bill Marimow at the Inquirer. Eric Grilly for online. Ed Mahlman in marketing. These people would be world-class talents at any company and for them to be in a newspaper in one building is pretty remarkable.

Q: Were there any surprises you weren't prepared for?

Tierney: There have been surprises like, in the fall, the real drop in national advertising, which has since come back. That was really painful but nobody foresaw it.

I think one of the things that's not a surprise, but it's probably the biggest challenge, is working towards changing the culture here in the building. Not so much in the newsrooms, but in the rest of the building to try to get a more optimistic [attitude].

Q: What is the financial health of the company right now? How are we doing with our debt payments?

Tierney: We're doing fine with them. We're on track. We're making all of our milestones.

What was unique about our investor group - this hasn't been really made clear - everybody here invested and they knew it wasn't going to be a Google-like return. But I also promised them it would make business sense, economic sense - we weren't going to lose their money. Nobody can sell for five years; everybody got into it knowing, as one guy said, "This is not my retirement money."

Q: How are you going to battle this decline in print advertising? What is the online strategy?

Tierney: We're going to stabilize and grow print. My goal is that the Daily News is going to become a 150,000-circulation paper. It will probably take us two or three years to do.

The reason I think we can do it here is because the down trend has been much more dramatic than it needed to be if the investments were made.

Online, I think our online business should double. That's why we brought in the best of the business in [new president of Philly.com] Eric Grilly.

Q: You think a hard copy of the newspaper is going to stay around 50 years?

Tierney: I'm not sure 50 years, but 10 years from now I think there will still be a hard copy of the paper. It's really a very efficient way to gather news.

Q: When you pick up the Daily News, what section do you go to first?

Tierney: I always look at both covers, see the front and the back. I love the gossip. The Daily News I pretty much read front to back. I love the stories about politics and I love the gossip and of course the sports is terrific.

Q: In the past year, what journalism in each paper has particularly impressed you?

Tierney: I thought we did a terrific job on the mayor's race. I thought the partnership the Daily News had with WHYY, the Committee of Seventy was great. I love the stories, I love the day-to-day crime beat stories, I love the zip that goes into it. I thought Simone [Weichselbaum]'s piece on the culture of death was a lot of space, but was really valuable.

Highlights [at the Inquirer]: I think the [Department of Human Services] stories were great and the way we kept on that was great. I think both papers have done a good job on the Fumo story.

Q: Do you think the quality at the Inquirer has been affected at all by the layoffs?

Tierney: Ironically - and it's not just me - I think everybody looking at it has said the Inquirer is better than it was the day I walked in the door and that's because of Bill Marimow. It's in spite of the layoffs and if Bill had had all the resources that were there beforehand, the paper would be even better.

Q: Do you regret at all some of those statements you made when you first showed up? Perhaps you should have sent a message that there might have to be sacrifices?

Tierney: You know, I didn't foresee the [advertising decline] - but nobody did, there's not a single analyst out there who saw that. And one of the things I said is the next great era in Philadelphia journalism begins today. And I really do believe that and I think we're proving it.

Q: Has it ever been hard to keep your pledge to not interfere editorially?

Tierney: It hasn't been. Partly that's by the nature of the ownership group. It's a diverse group; we go from the carpenters union to Bruce Toll, who owns a non-union homebuilding company. Our owners really did mean it when we said we knew the importance of editorial independence.

I came over here because I passionately want this place to be successful. And, God willing, I hope I'm here 25 years from now in some role, doing what I'm doing. Which is one of the reasons we're passing on the Dow Jones thing . . .

Q: I was going to get to that. Are there properties you would be interested in?

Tierney: It's not as if we're looking to buy big properties. We are looking at acquisitions that make sense for us. The Dow Jones thing was opportunistic and it tied with me knowing a chunk of the family.

We've still got a lot more to do here. . . . And this sense that for us to do the Dow Jones thing would involve us completely taking the eye off this ball.

Q: Is there a dream property for you in the future?

Tierney: No, I think it's to build up these properties. I think this business could be much bigger than it is in this region. Especially having the number-one Web site. We haven't begun to scratch the surface of what Philly.com can be on its own and what can the Daily News be on Philly.com.

Q: If money was no issue, what one thing would you do today for the Daily News and the Inquirer?

Tierney: I'd let the Daily News pick up 20 more journalists and the Inquirer pick up another 50 journalists and do all the things we want to get done.

Q: You're still looking at this as a long term job?

Tierney: This is the most fun. It's not like we owned a radio station and we're trying to decide whether to go to salsa music or top 40. This is the people's work. You can really feel like you're doing important things.

To be able to have the chance to work with journalists like this, to help support what they're doing . . . It's exciting. *