As his newspapers were financially failing, top boss Brian Tierney took home raises totalling $250,000 last year.
And this was after he asked staffers to give up their $5 a week raises to help the papers survive.
The 42 percent bump in salary put Tierney's annual pay at $850,000.
In court on Tuesday, bankruptcy attorneys said Tierney and two other newspaper executives will roll back their 2008 raises while the company tries to shed debt and stay afloat.
Another revelation: Hours before Sunday's bankruptcy filing, Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, rejected a $20 million loan from current lenders in favor of a loan that would protect Tierney's job. Click here for more details on that testimony.
Philadelphia Newspapers is the parent company Tierney put together to buy the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News in 2006. All of the salary information is included in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy court documents.
Wondering how a public relations maverick thought a move like that could have a good outcome?
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Here's how: The company says it SAVED more than one milliond dollars because Tierney has been doing the work of two executives since the fall of 2006.
On Wednesday, Tierney talked to NBC10's Tim Lake about why he took the raise, why he rolled it back after the controversy and the future of Philly's papers:
Here are some other clips from the Tierney interview:
