Hoagie City Hero

A frilly daily debuts in Philly

Philadelphia is known for its soft pretzels (eaten with mustard), snapper soup (eaten with sherry) and heroic sandwiches (eaten with trepidation, and called hoagies). Last week another item--well-dressed cheesecake--was added to the local menu when Canadian Publisher Pierre Peladeau served up his new Philadelphia Journal, a breezy morning tabloid with an initial circulation of 200,000. The Journal's salient contribution to the state of journalism is a daily Philly filly on page 7, fully clothed but flashing a thigh, a kneecap or some other item of civic pride. The paper devotes nearly half of its 60-odd pages to sports and most of the rest to staff-written tales of local crime and kindness (FIREBOMB HORROR; BOXER STILL LOVED DESPITE CHARGES). The Journal has no editorial page. "I like news," says Peladeau, "and my papers don't take political stands."

The son of a Montreal lumber dealer, Peladeau, 52, worked his way through the University of Montreal law school, bent on becoming a show-business impresario. He abandoned that dream in 1950 to buy a failing bilingual weekly outside Montreal for $1,500. He eventually parlez-voused it into an empire of 20 tacky Canadian newspapers, 22 magazines (most of them sold in the U.S., including the [ikes of Boxing Illustrated and Pioneer West), eight printing plants and an ink-making concern. The firm, Quebecor Inc., had sales last year of $104 million and is listed on the American Stock Exchange. Peadeau (or "Pile-o-dough," as he is sometimes called in Canada) blew into Philadelphia only three months ago, quietly hired a staff of 50 local journalists and rented typewriter space for them in a vacant A&P supermarket across Market Street from the Bulletin. Peladeau pays the Bulletin to set type for the Journal, and three small suburban dailies to print it. "I don't invest in buildings," he says. "I invest in staff and promotion."

The new Journal is the first major daily to be started in the city of hoagies in 51 years, and the city's three largest dailies have begun protecting their flanks against the invader. The afternoon tabloid Daily News (circ. 232,000) is about to hire six new reporters for its 85-member news staff. The self-consciously respectable morning Inquirer (circ. 412,000) has added more racing news and gossip. At the evening Bulletin (circ. 556,000), reporters say privately that pressure is on to be livelier and more competitive.

Warns Peladeau: "If they try to do what we are doing, I will knock them out --no contest." Even if rivals do not try stooping to conquer, the publisher plans eventually to branch out in Atlanta, Boston, Detroit and Los Angeles. The imitation Journals doubtless will have plenty of local confections on page 7.

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