It’s a damned shame – but not a surprise – that the company that publishes the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News just filed for bankruptcy, joining Tribune, Journal Register, and more surely to follow. There’s a reason I picked Philadelphia as the poster child in my New Business Models for News Summit: destiny. Brian Tierney and his fellow investors took over the Philly papers with the best of intentions but running them under the old economics of newspapers and hedavy debt was doomed to failure; the recession only accelerated that ride down the slope. We need completely new models for news, not old models adjusted by increments. But bankruptcy can be an opportunity to make drastic moves (as I suggested with the LA Times) and it is also an opportunity for a new player to ender the market with new methods.
LATER: But Forbes reports that even while sliding down the slippery slope, he took a big raise.
