Brian Tierney occupies the power suite that goes with being the publisher of a major legacy newspaper. Tall windows on three sides. Conference table for those who are summoned. Good view of downtown Philadelphia real estate. From this 12th-floor aerie, Walter Annenberg, an old-style press lord who chummed with royals and the Reagans, watched over his two cash cows, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the wildly profitable TV Guide.

Ambassador Annenberg, as he liked to be called after Nixon appointed him to the Court of St. James’s, was in the newspaper business back when business was good. Tierney, a voluble, self-made millionaire from the Philly suburbs, is an ambassador of a different sort. He is the on-site manager representing the group of prominent Philadelphia investors who put up $515 million to buy the struggling Inquirer and the smaller Philadelphia Daily News when they fell from the grip of the collapsing Knight-Ridder chain in 2006.

Legacy newspaper is the industry term for traditional papers that represent old-fashioned journalistic values but face digital-age financial agonies. Tierney, tieless and in shirt sleeves, seems a lot more relaxed than I would be in his chair, exposed to the Inquirer’s recession-ravaged balance sheet and the negative vibes from a pared-down news staff that mistrusts him for taking the financial steps needed to save their jobs. Originally, Tierney says, he thought his biggest challenge would be placating his journalists and that he and his investors would whip the financial side into shape in quick order.

“It’s been just the opposite,” he says, in a tone of genuine surprise. He bought goodwill with reporters and editors with a signed pledge of noninterference in news decisions. But he was amazed by the lethargy he found elsewhere. “The worst part of this experience has been the culture of the business side, particularly in advertising sales,” he says. “I’ve got some salesmen who make $100,000 a year and have no interest in making $120,000.”