Annette John-Hall’s column in the Inquirer this morning on the political uproar set in motion by the release of snippets of sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright offers a picture of the man and his message that’s quite different from what’s been reported. Informed by her own faith and bolstered by listening to complete recordings of the sermons, the piece is both a heartfelt plea for understanding and a sharp rebuke to those who would judge by sound bites. John-Hall discussed the column this afternoon with Philadelphia magazine intern Luke Sirinides.
DAILY EXAMINER: I know many readers have seen or read transcripts of the clips, but can you offer specific examples of how things Rev. Wright has said have been distorted, or which clips were especially egregious?
ANNETTE JOHN-HALL: Like Jesse Jackson said, “text without context is pretext.” That is to say, any words taken out of context can be interpreted any way. And with this endless spool of sound bytes, I can easily see why Wright is being called unpatriotic. I’m thinking of the “chickens coming home to roost” comment, and “God damn America.” The truth is, a lot of African-Americans feel that way. And that’s not to excuse it, but the sentiment goes back to even the civil rights movement when Nina Simone wrote a song called “Mississippi God Damn” in reaction to the injustices going on at that time. And Wright was just riffing off that theme. But if you are an African-American who grew up in the era of Jim Crow and experienced discrimination, you would have some justification — or at least explanation — for feeling some of the things Wright verbalized.
Times are tough at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, where 68 employees were laid off this week following publisher Brian P. Tierney’s telling the newspapers’ unions in January that the company needs to cut 10 percent of its costs by summer or fall or face “a dire situation.”
But could the tough times also be affecting Tierney?
Heads keep rolling at Philadelphia Media Holdings. This January, CEO Brian P. Tierney told union chiefs at the Inquirer and Daily News that the company needed to cut 10 percent of its costs. According to a just released Newspaper Guild memo, the publisher has followed up by laying off 68 employees, mostly from the ad department (though none from editorial). As might be expected, the Guild is less than pleased, accusing the company of creating a “climate of fear.”
Brian P. Tierney didn’t really drop a bomb today — he just warned union honchos representing Inquirer and Daily News staffers that such a weapon exists.
Citing bleak economic forecasts and difficulty making debt payments incurred when Philadelphia Media Holdings acquired the news properties in May 2006, Tierney predicted a “dire situation” by summer or fall if the company cannot find ways to cut costs by 10 percent. “It’s worrying,” said one news staffer. “It seems we’ve been through an endless series of cuts, buyouts and layoffs. I don’t know how far they can continue cutting, but it’s not promising.”
Philadelphia Media Holdings CEO Brian Tierney will meet this morning with union heads representing the vast majority of employees at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. According to sources inside the newsroom, the main topic of the 10 a.m. meeting will be the “shitty state of the economy” and its expected effects on the newspapers. He might also address the status of the expected sale of the company’s historic headquarters at 400 North Broad Street.
Tierney held a similar meeting with newsroom management late last week in which he applauded the newsroom’s efforts and boasted of a huge spike in pageviews on philly.com, the company’s web property. Before anyone could order up a case of champagne, however, he also noted the advertising department needs to “step up its efforts” and said the current hiring freeze would continue “for the most part.”
The hiring freeze is of particular interest because Inquirer editors have been meeting with potential new hires for several weeks. Now it seems that at least some of that hiring might be put on hold. Stay tuned for whatever it is Tierney has to say to the troops. — Steve Volk
Philadelphia Media Holdings, the parent company of both the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News, has replaced circulation director Mike Proebstle with relatively recent hire Jim Gregory.
The timing of Proebstle’s departure is particularly curious: The Inquirer and Daily News were among the few newspapers in America to post small circulation gains when the latest industry figures were reported early this month.
Reached by telephone, Proebstle declined to comment.
Gregory has been with PMH only since April. He previously worked for 25 years at the Courier-Post, where current Philly Media Holdings VP Mark Frisby served as publisher from 2001 until he joined the Philly papers roughly one year ago. Frisby announced Gregory’s promotion earlier this week in a staff memo that never even mentions Proebstle, who, according to a bio still available online, “started with Philadelphia Newspapers in January 2002 and during his over 4 years of tenure has consistently achieved market share gains versus the other print media in the marketplace.”
Frisby, Tierney and Gregory did not return calls requesting an interview. — Steve Volk
Martin proposed relaxing a rule that bans newspapers from owning TV stations (and vice versa) in the same market. If the plan flies — his FCC brethren will vote on it December 18th — Tierney and his Philadelphia Media Holdings partners would be free to go shopping for a Philly TV station as a way of bolstering the Inquirer’s increasingly shaky ad sales situation.
The tricky part? Almost all of our local TV outlets are network-owned, so unless Tierney can find a way to wow Sumner Redstone, Rupert Murdoch, GE or Disney, their stations are off the table. Which leaves only MyPHL 17 — currently owned by the Tribune Company — as a possible target.
But wait, the Tribune Company? Don’t they own newspapers? Why yes, they do — including the Chicago Tribune, the L.A. Times and Newsday. Which suddenly makes you wonder if Brian Tierney would be less interested in buying a TV station from Tribune than in selling them the Inky and Daily News, for which he and his partners seriously overpaid a year and a half ago.
Tierney was not immediately available for comment. — Tom McGrath
Editor & Publisher reports today that the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News will be among the relatively few major newspapers with a circulation increase or a decrease of less than 1 percent — in the Inky’s case, both — when the industry releases new numbers come Monday.
What this means is that our local papers are outperforming their counterparts across the nation, which are expected to show an overall daily circ decrease of 2.5 percent and a Sunday drop of 3.5 percent over the latest six-month reporting period.
A highly placed source with knowledge of the audit figures says the Inquirer will show a gain of around 7,000 copies daily but a decline of more than 10,000 copies on Sundays. In the past the Inquirer has lost as many as 30,000 Sunday readers in a six-month period.
The Daily News will show a teensy increase in daily circ, under 1,000 copies. These figures will probably still provide an occasion for staff at the People Paper to crack open a bottle of champagne — or at least a Schlitz or two: The DN hasn’t reported any increase at all in nine years.
To put these figures in some perspective, the newspaper business has always been a numbers game. Show advertisers an increase in readership, and the job of selling them an ad gets a whole lot easier. So however Philadelphia Media Holdings CEO Brian P. Tierney is playing the game, he seems to be playing it a lot better than his predecessors at Knight-Ridder. — Steve Volk
Buried in the middle of the Inquirer’s A3 Rick-Santorum-blasts-brown-people story this morning is a bracketed announcement that the former U.S. senator, our state’s preeminent Islamo-Fascist Warrior, will begin a biweekly op-ed column for the paper starting next month.
Philly Mag writer at large Jason Fagone first broke the rumor of a Santorum-penned column in early April in a followup to his massive Tierney exposé. Tierney confirmed to Fagone that the Inquirer was in “low-level” discussions with Santorum at the time, but seemed overly confident that Santorum’s blandly ignorant musings would never be printed in his paper:
Tierney put the chances of Santorum’s column ever appearing in the paper at “one out of 1,000. We’d probably be more likely to have Dan Rather write a column for us. Seriously. And I’m not being facetious.”
By “one out of 1,000,” he apparently meant “starting November 1st,” and anyone smart enough to play those odds just got a hefty payout. So, is it safe to assume that Dan Rather shot Tierney down?
Annette John-Hall’s column in the Inquirer this morning on the political uproar set in motion by the release of snippets of sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright offers a picture of the man and his message that’s quite different from what’s been reported. Informed by her own faith and bolstered by listening to complete recordings of the sermons, the piece is both a heartfelt plea for understanding and a sharp rebuke to those who would judge by sound bites. John-Hall discussed the column this afternoon with Philadelphia magazine intern Luke Sirinides.
Times are tough at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, where 68 employees were laid off this week following publisher Brian P. Tierney’s telling the newspapers’ unions in January that the company needs to 
Heads keep rolling at Philadelphia Media Holdings. This January, CEO Brian P. Tierney told union chiefs at the Inquirer and Daily News that the company needed to cut 
Philadelphia Media Holdings CEO Brian Tierney will meet this morning with union heads representing the vast majority of employees at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. According to sources inside the newsroom, the main topic of the 10 a.m. meeting will be the “shitty state of the economy” and its expected effects on the newspapers. He might also address the status of the expected sale of the company’s historic headquarters at 400 North Broad Street.
Philadelphia Media Holdings, the parent company of both the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News, has replaced circulation director Mike Proebstle with relatively recent hire Jim Gregory.
Editor & Publisher reports today that the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News will be among the relatively few major newspapers with a circulation increase or a decrease of less than 1 percent — in the Inky’s case, both — when the industry releases new numbers come Monday.
Buried in the middle of the Inquirer’s A3