A Million Stories

All the news we care to print.

Evan M. Lopez

Exciting campaign news: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato released a white paper on arts and cultural stuff last week, and his staffers really wanted us (and you) to read it. What do you think, they asked. (Sounds, um, nice.) Want an interview? (Sure.) Want an op-ed? (No, thanks.) Isn't this swell? (Maybe we should read it first.)

"Dan Onorato believes that our innovative cultural enterprises and rich arts, cultural and historical heritage are among Pennsylvania's strongest assets . As governor, Onorato will support art and culture's role in enhancing the quality of life for all Pennsylvanians, providing world-class educational opportunities and driving economic development in communities across the commonwealth. ..."

Oh, hey, what's that? Sorry, we dozed off for a sec.

Fortunately, the paper's only five pages long, so after one little bump of crystal meth we plowed right through it. This we discerned: Dan Onorato loves the arts and culture and tourism. He wants to restore cultural funding where possible; make schoolkids watch ballet ; attract big stars; better market our historical treasures; and bring in more sweet, sweet tourism dollars. This, you see, will make Pennsylvania a wonderful place to live, and we will all get diamond-encrusted ponies .

His paper, though, is a bit short on specifics: The only funding source he mentions is the proposed Marcellus Shale drilling severance tax, which he would use to establish a historic preservation tax credit. This is by design, we suppose; really, he just wants you artsy-fartsy peeps to know that, despite his tough-guy Italian exterior, you won't be forgotten in an Onorato administration.

"You gotta look at what the payback is," he tells A Million Stories. " What drives revenues : The nonprofit cultural organizations, the impact is about $2 billion annually, $155 million in state revenues and 60,000 jobs. It makes sense for the state to be investing in areas where jobs are created."

Sounding not unlike Rise of the Creative Class author (and, as Onorato happily points out, former Pittsburgher) Richard Florida, Onorato notes that in the "darkest days" of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, the Pittsburgh Culture Trust there and the creation of the Avenue of the Arts here became keys to jump-starting the cities' downtowns.

"I watched the Cultural Trust save the core of [Pittsburgh] when there was nobody coming into the core of this region," says the Allegheny County executive.

It's great that he understands the interconnectivity between the arts and livability and downtown renaissances, though you get the sense that Onorato's enthusiasm is more about the state's bottom line than art for art's sake. But that's fine. So long, that is, that at some point he puts meat on the bone and tells us exactly how far he's willing to go — in these trying economic times, where lawmakers are searching high and low for programs to cut — to make this state's cultural assets his priorities.

End-Zone Dancing

The settlement negotiated between the new and old owners of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News involves paying departed CEO Brian Tierney $300,000 plus benefits in exchange for Tierney not pursuing further litigation against the new owners, according a transcript of a May 12 hearing in federal bankruptcy court obtained by City Paper.

Which is, you know, exactly what this newspaper reported May 19, citing two sources close to the negotiation [Naked City, "Terms of Estrangement," Ralph Cipriano]. And it's exactly what Tierney — who declined to comment for our story — denied to WHYY's Susan Phillips on May 21.

Ahem.

According to the transcript of the settlement conference, Tierney agreed to become a consultant in exchange for six months' salary — $300,000 — and health benefits. The new owners — a group of lenders headed by Angelo, Gordon & Co. of New York, which purchased the papers at auction April 28 for $139 million — would also pay two months' salary to 21 of Tierney's managers .

And so ends (sorta) Tierney's foray into the world of newspaper publishing (although he left as CEO May 21, Tierney will remain the papers' publisher until later this summer), which began in 2006 when his cadre of local investors bought the papers for $515 million . Within three years, the papers were in bankruptcy. Not Tierney's fault, of course — if we could solve newspapers' financial problems, we'd be rich bastards by now — but we're not exactly shedding tears for him, either.

Tierney's spokesman, Jay Devine, declined to comment last week; Tierney couldn't be reached for an interview. Which is a shame, really. We just wanted to tell him his pants looked like they might be a little warm . Also, the smoke ...

Dept. of Sad Face

By: Evan M. Lopez (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

When we heard last week's news about the seven layoffs at 88.5 WXPN-FM, we were troubled. Yeah, layoffs always suck. But what did WXPN's move mean for a project this newspaper had chronicled since its infancy?

The layoffs included Josh T. Landow, who, after the modern-rock station Y100 suddenly flipped formats in 2005, had helped keep the genre alive in Philly, first at the web station y100rocks.com, and later with WXPN's altered-beast web and HD2 station Y-Rock on XPN . (Landow's Y-Rock on XPN partner, Jim McGuinn, departed for Minnesota Public Radio in early 2009.)

Exiting alongside Landow are the Wednesday-through-Friday evening on-air modern rock shows Y-Rock contributed to the station.

The decisions to oust Landow and drop the Y-Rock shows were "related but not directly connected," says WXPN general manager Roger LaMay . "When we launched Y-Rock with Jim and Josh, we saw the evening shows on 88.5 as a way to use our air to build awareness and promote the service on HD2 ." But HD2 never took off they way the station hoped. "We've been doing that for about four years, and our evening weekday programming has not been doing all that well, audience- and fundraising-wise, the last couple of years. We felt strongly that we needed to have consistent Monday-through-Friday evening programming to get it on track."

The station considered turning its airwaves over to Y-Rock five nights a week, LaMay says, but its " audience was not really showing up in those hours." Nonetheless, LaMay assures, Y-Rock will stay on WXPN's streaming and HD2 formats.

And, he continues, the station will continue to trumpet local artists . He's particularly stoked about a blog "100 percent focused on local music" that the station plans to launch in mid-August. That blog will be one of 10 single-topic websites funded by NPR's Argo Project — and of them, the only one dedicated to music. (The others will be paired with news stations.)

"It will be based here and [run by] a single full-time journalist blogger," he says, though they're still interviewing candidates. He adds that the blog "will have a Philadelphia-centric name of its own sometime in the next few weeks."

If it's " Y-Rock's Rock Blog," we give up.

This week's report by Jeffrey C. Billman, Ralph Cipriano and Brian Howard. E-mail us at amillionstories@citypaper.net.