Employees of Knight Ridder newspapers suffered debilitating cuts year after year. Then, when the company was put up for sale last year, they worried about who would buy the papers. In what might be termed a happy ending, employees at the former KR’s papers in Philadelphia cheered their new boss Brian Tierney (pictured) on his first day on the job, according to this report in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Anna Bevan, an advertising employee, said: “This man is giving us hope.” Of course reporters are always cynical, including the Inquirer’s Barbara Boyer, who said: “Within three months, the honeymoon will be over and either we’ll start to see significant change or we’ll start feeling a frustration level … We’re all craving change.” The Philadelphia Inquirer (350,000 circulation weekdays, 705,000 Sundays) and Daily News (116,000 weekdays, no Sunday) were bought by a group of local owners led by Tierney, an advertising and PR man who is a native of the city of brotherly love. (Photo from the Philadelphia Weekly.)
The story concluded with the description of a staff meeting Tierney had at the end of his first day: “Tierney drew sustained applause when, alluding to the previous owners, he told the group: ‘The advantage we have is, we don’t have to check out anything with San Jose or Miami. We don’t have to check with anybody.'”
• Tierney’s letter to readers about local ownership and the public trust
• How Tierney turned the ownership change into a city-wide celebration
• Tierney’s biography — awed by his own Horatio Alger arc
• Job 1 for new owners: Raise papers’ profile