Brian Tierney’s Business & PR Plan for Philadelphia Papers

The PR man-turned media mogul Brian Tierney is hoping to save his Philadelphia Daily News from extinction, and keep ownership of it, and the Philadelphia Inquirer and combined site Philly.com local, through a restructuring and PR push, according to an interview with PoynterOnline.

Tierney, with homebuilder Bruce Toll and a group of his former clients bought the papers from McClatchy in 2006 for $562 million. We all know what happened to the newspaper industry since then. The new group hoping to save the papers includes Toll as well as an unnamed “rich guy” referred to as “Penn Matrix.”

The former head of Philly’s biggest agency Tierney Communications (now part of Interpublic [NYSE: IPG]) filed a plan that promises to generate $92 million in revenues, while also running full page ads and launching a Twitter feed and Facebook Page to “Keep it Local!”.

As Poynter’s Rick Edmonds points out, the audience for this PR campaign comes down to one: the bankruptcy court judge.

Related reading on FishbowlNY: Local Newspapers Fight To Survive, But Are They Going About It The Right Way?

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