The profile of Inquirer/Daily News owner Brian Tierney that's in the current Philadelphia magazine had been sitting in my to-read pile for almost a week, but I finally got to it last night and... my lord.
Tierney, as you may or may not know, was briefly my boss, as he purchased the papers along with Broad Street Community Newspapers while I was working for the BSCN-owned Trend Leader. I'm not bitter about being laid off, as I'm in a much better situation now, and I know Tierney himself didn't choose me, personally, for the layoff list. But reading the piece, uh, hmm...
Bruce Toll, another co-owner of the paper, has this anecdote told about him:
Bruce Toll, vice chairman of Toll Brothers, has embarked on a second career as a peripatetic investor, buying into a biotech start-up, a bagel chain, a chain of for-profit methadone clinics, a for-profit kidney dialysis company and a huge auto mall. When I asked him if the newspaper business was like any other he’d been in, he said, “No. This is the hardest business I’ve invested in. And there’s so much unknown. In methadone clinics, everyone who signs up keeps going for the rest of their life. Once you’re there, you’re there. Same with dialysis. ... But with newspapers, you’ve got to resell the newspaper every day, with advertising and such.” Toll is the chairman of Philadelphia Media Holdings. In Toll’s office, there’s a drawing, given to him by his kids, of Scrooge McDuck, the money-worshiping villain from the old DuckTales cartoons. (Toll is a notorious cost-cutter — he says his tactic is to look for costs that can be cut but don’t affect anyone, “like health care.")So, let's review: Methodone: good (and, for profit.) Health care: bad. The fact that someone would actually consider Scrooge McDuck a figure of admiration, I suppose, validates that old adage about the rich being different from you and me. When Toll watches "It's a Wonderful Life," does he root for Mr. Potter?
Here's the eeriest part, though. A couple of weeks before I was laid off, my office held a blind auction, in which my prize was... an Easy Button. Others won bottles of liquor or sushi kits, but I got the Easy Button. The day I was laid off, in a bit of gallows humor, I made some joke along the lines of... "They laid off 70 people? That was easy."
From the piece:
But in other ways, Tierney has made the publisher’s suite his own. On the wall, a new sign reads YOU GET THE CULTURE YOU’RE WILLING TO ACCEPT. There’s a red “EASY” button from Staples next to his iMac; when you press the button, a voice says, “That was easy.”I guess they really work, just like in the commercials!
Philebrity, meanwhile, has gone through the profile... and illustrated it with YouTubes from Monster movies!
Posted by Stephen Silver at March 29, 2007 05:39 PMScrooge McDuck may have been a villain in other places, but NOT in Duck Tales. He was a rich, generally good-hearted (though sometimes a little greedy) uncle to Huey, Dewey and Louie. In fact, when there needed to be a "bad guy," it was often Flintheart Glomgold.
Not that this has much of anything to do with the piece or Tierney, but I can't stand when writers fuck up their pop culture references. Plus, I watched "The Disney Afternoon" whenever I was home sick from school. Glad it finally came in handy.
Posted by: Jeremy Wahlman at March 29, 2007 10:43 PM