“$500 Million Company” Wants Cut of Pete Dexter’s Book

There’s a great Daily Examiner story by Steve Volk about the legal tussle between Philadelphia Media Holdings and Pete Dexter over Paper Trails, a collection of Dexter’s journalistic writings for various outlets, including the Philadephia Daily News. Essentially, PMH is asserting that Dexter didn’t get permission to reprint the Daily News material, and they’re willing to spend hundreds of dollars in attorney’s fees to get $42,000 of the advance Ecco paid him, all of which he gave to his editor, who actually dug into the archives and found the material. The unresolved conflict has delayed publication of the paperback.

The best part of the story, though, is when PMH’s CEO, Brian Tierney, tried to get into it with Dexter’s agent, Esther Newberg, and attempted to browbeat her by assering that PMH is “a $500 million company.” Her response? “I doubt it.”

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