Colo. Executive New President of Philly.Com

By Bob Fernandez, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Mar. 9–Philadelphia Media Holdings L.L.C., publisher of The Inquirer and Daily News, has hired Colorado media executive Eric J. Grilly as president of its Philly.com online businesses.

Grilly, 36, has been the top online executive and a senior vice president at MediaNews Group Inc., of Denver, a 54-newspaper chain. He also previously held an online job with the McClatchy Co.

“All the action is at the local level,” Grilly said in an interview yesterday. He said the national spotlight in the media business is on Philadelphia and its local ownership group, which is attempting to capture advertisers and readers as they migrate from newspapers to Web sites.

Grilly was one of the highest-paid executives in MediaNews Group, earning $346,050 in salary and bonus in 2006, according to regulatory filings. He is the son of Gerald Grilly, former publisher of the Anchorage Daily News and Denver Post. The elder Grilly retired as chief operating officer of MediaNews Group in August 2006.

PMH chief executive officer Brian Tierney said he expected Philly.com’s annual revenue to double to $50 million in the next year. Online businesses under the Philly.com umbrella include Phillycars.com, Phillyforrent.com and Phillyforsale.com.

Tierney said the company’s Web sites were getting 31 million page views a month, compared with 23 million a year ago.

PMH will unveil a redesigned Web site in May or June. The redesign will cost $2 million, and the new site will be marketed with an additional $2 million, he said.

—–

To see more of The Philadelphia Inquirer, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.philly.com.

Copyright (c) 2007, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

MNI,