I get trade magazines. I really do. You have your fellow businesses that you’re trying to reach. It’s all one big cozy industry and everything stays in the family. But this particular trade magazine, Philly Ad Club’s Ad News happens to land on my desk every month so I assume they have some sort of a larger audience that they happen to know reads the thing. Today I opened up to the guest editorial written by one Michael Gillespie Jr. The piece started out fine, quoting Jefferson and his “Given a choice between a free government and a free press, I would surely choose the latter.” Cute, cute. Then Gillespie went on to discuss the closing of The Philadelphia Bulletin. Okay, fine. And then he talks about how the Bulletin would’ve survived if only it had Brian Tierney.
Stop the presses. Brian Tierney? The same Brian Tierney who as a PR man for the Philadelphia Archdiocese tried to ruin the reputation of Philadelphia Inquirer reporters whose stories showed the Archdiocese was wasting funds and covering up sexual abuse scandals? The same. The same Brian Tierney who justified the hiring of John Yoo? The same. The same Brian Tierney who gave himself a gargantuan pay raise while at the same time that his papers are going bankrupt and his employees have their pay cut?
The same. The editorial’s purpose is clear, to encourage ad agencies to advertise in Tierney’s papers. Or as Gillespie so eloquently writes “ Let’s help Tierney save his business and our society.” Okay, no problem with that. As long as you’re straightforward about what you’re trying to do. (Which makes sense considering Tierney is your buddy in the Philly Ad Club’s Advocacy committee.) Nothing wrong with helping out an old friend. And you correctly point out that “Brian Tierney is a Philadelphia original.” Okay, but so was the Unicorn Killer. Big whoop. And it makes even more sense when you consider that Tierney is heading up his new campaign, “Keep it Local,” which asks Philadelphians to maintain their loyalty to the Inquirer/Daily News. (Or as I like to call it “Keep it Local, Keep it Stupid.”)
But what galls me even more is that Gillespie (or the poor copywriter who had to write this piece), harps on and on about “real journalism.”
Yet, we hear on the radio; read on Drudge; skim through a blog, and think we have the news. We have developed new terms like Swift-boating and birthers. We need vetted, trustworthy journalism if we are to save the society with which we have become accustomed. Drudge does not provide News. Really!
Wait, so if that’s not where we can get real news, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News are? Gimme a break. Show me a well-informed person in Philadelphia who relies solely on these papers for their source of local/national/international news and I’ll show you somebody with half the story. Whether you like it or not Mr. Old Journalism, blogs/radio shows/alternative news sources like Philebrity, Phawker and Phillyist are here to stay. And Philly’s alt-weeklies, Citypaper and Philadelphia Weekly, they’re pretty darn good too. And they’ve all got advertisers. And if you guys aren’t going to capitalize on that, your loss.
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Nicely put, pg … I’d be more inclined to “Keep It Local,” as Philadelphia Media keeps urging me, if there more, y’know, local content in the Inky and DN instead of scads of wire copy …
Yeah, I hate that stuff. Plus, they rarely report anything in my neighborhood. They’re very Center City centered. Although CP and PW fill that niche very nicely.
You forgot to mention that it’s the same Brian Tierney who laid off over 100 workers when he took over.
Thanks Phillytom, it’s just so hard to keep track of the things he’s done.
OK it’s totally stupid for me to be defending this, because PMH laid me off a year ago while Tierney and a few other executives took bonuses many times my yearly paycheck and I find the Keep It Local thing obnoxious as fuck, but seriously: most original hard-news reporting in Philly at the moment is absolutely done by the Inquirer and Daily News. I don’t think you’ll find that even the bitchiest of the new-media heralds who have actually worked in the business would claim that TV news, blogs and the alt-weeklies are creating original hard news material more than once in a while, or would be able to fill the void if PMH (or whatever they’re calling themselves these days) no longer supplied them with primary-source material.
I am not saying this to imply that they’re inferior or lazy or something, which I think is one of the big misunderstandings that gets old and new media people all two-hamsters-in-one-cage all the time. I’m just pointing out that they don’t and will not for a while have the resources to send someone to City Council meetings, pay someone who’s not some dumbass 22-year-old (spoken as someone who was recently a dumbass 22-year-old) to work on a story for more than a day, listen to the police scanner at night, check facts, etc.
I mean, goddamn. Mr. Old Journalism. Please. If you’d showed even the slightest bit of curiosity about this, just to the point of googling, you’d have noticed that Tierney is on the board of Philadelphia Ad Club with Gillespie.
http://www.phillyadclub.com/about_officers.php
Hi lexis-nexis,
Thanks for your comments. Good to hear from a journalist’s perspective.
I should clarify my (rather glib) comments about old/new journalism. Naturally, since I write for on average, five blogs, I will protest to the death the need for a forum (like this), where folks can discuss/debate current events/trends/etc. But clearly, blogs can’t run without “original hard news material.” It’s a symbiotic relationship. At the same time, I still do think the reason why they’re so successful is because on some level, they provide news that major newspapers can miss/don’t cover. Take http://www.sepiamutiny.com, for instance. If you’re a South Asian American looking for news about your community, as I am – there will be times they’re able to do a better job than mainstream newspapers. They pick up the slack. (Which probably has to do with having more diversity in the newsroom, but don’t let me get started on that rant.)
http://www.justdemocracyblog.org/?p=540
Now, alt-weeklies are another story. Sure they have less resources than PHM, but I don’t think Brian Howard and his team at City Paper depend on PMH for “original hard-news reporting.” They definitely do it themselves, as does PW. Perhaps they can’t afford to do it on a daily basis…. but if more people would advertise with them, they could! (Hello Philly Ad Club, advertise with alt-weeklies!)
Also regarding “If you’d showed even the slightest bit of curiosity about this, just to the point of googling, you’d have noticed that Tierney is on the board of Philadelphia Ad Club with Gillespie.”
Excellent point, thanks. I was well aware of that fact and assumed folks knew that. My mistake. I didn’t add that specific fact, but I did point out the close relationship between T. and G. Please take a look at the line in the post above “(Which makes sense considering Tierney is your buddy in the Philly Ad Club’s Advocacy committee.)”
Now on to resources. I think the whole point of my rant was that Philly’s ad agencies should know better than to lay all their eggs in one basket. Asking businesses to invest in Tierney’s holdings simply on the basis that they’re local is ridiculous, as you pointed out. Why invest in philly.com, which does a terrible job of disseminating news, when there are half a dozen websites that could do a better job and attract a greater number of readers? But I think the numbers will speak for themselves. If old journalism were really speaking to their subscribers, circulation wouldn’t have fallen.
That was clearly a bit of insomnia-induced bitch-rant there. It just pushes my buttons when someone equates disseminating information with creating information. Then again, I’m not in ads; I would imagine that ad people tend to think of it more in a sum-total way than maybe other blogs around town who always cast it as some weird Battle Royale between the righteous bloggers and the old incompetent print media. Although I’m sure they’re mostly doing it to get a thousand pageviews from an angry Dan Gross.
I do genuinely believe that this town is gonna get seriously fucked by the greedy/corrupt for five or ten years if the dailies go under, though, which is why I’m so touchy about this stuff. I like Philly! I think people should be less blithe about what our officials will do if they know there’s only hobbyists and underfunded freelancers watching!
But lord knows “should” is a dumb word to be using these days.
“That was clearly a bit of insomnia-induced bitch-rant there. ”
I do it all the time :/ No worries.
“I do genuinely believe that this town is gonna get seriously fucked by the greedy/corrupt for five or ten years if the dailies go under, though, which is why I’m so touchy about this stuff. I like Philly!”
I like Philly too. And newspapers. Definitely don’t want to see the dailies go under, but if they can’t sustain themselves, the business model needs re-examining. Hopefully everything will work out *crosses fingers.
He laid off over 100 reporters and photographers and ad people in 2007 – another 50 or more in 2009!!I hope tomorrow HE is looking for work!!
It makes me ill that he calls himself a Christian!!
God bless the workers at the paper!!
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