According to Jonathan Neumann, Tierney created "a whole new playbook" for the city's public relations community. "Once Brian had some success mounting personal attacks on reporters," he says, "we started getting those kinds of calls all the time."
Neumann faced meetings with Tierney other than those involving Cipriano. He says the public relations exec once declared that two separate reporters working on two separate stories were biased against Tierney's two separate clients-just like Cipriano.
Hey, if it worked once ...
Neumann's take on Tierney doesn't sit well with some people, including Tierney himself.
"I think it's a sad day that someone I've always considered an enemy of the First Amendment and an enemy of the Constitution now owns those newspapers," says Neumann.
The story is rather involved, but basically it's a story of cowardly editors backing down to what sounds like surprisingly minor public pressure. I really don't understand why editors seem to break so easily. It's not Tierney's fault the wimps made his job easy. Give in to this crap and it'll keep coming. If it works they'll keep doing it.