Thom Fladung, former metro editor of the Detroit Free Press, is returning as managing editor. Fladung, 42, was managing editor of the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal for the previous two years. He worked for the Free Press from 1994 to 2000, and he rejoined the paper in late October. Fladung replaces Carole Leigh Hutton, who was promoted to executive editor in June, two months after the death of Executive Editor Robert G. McGruder. Fladung said he will give readers news “that you did not know about when you went to bed the night before.” He also said he would push for “new and fresh” stories and deliver them “on the front page, under a big headline.” “I don’t accept the idea that we can’t compete because of CNN or the Internet,” Fladung said. “Readers want news out of the paper.”
Bob Gremillion, South Florida Sun-Sentinel publisher, has been given further responsibilities for sibling station WBZL-TV. Tribune purchased the Hollywood-based WBZL-TV five years ago, but was banned from operating it in conjunction with Fort Lauderdale’s Sun-Sentinel until August, when federal regulators chose to allow cooperation between the groups. The two can now cross-promote and share news and advertising resources. Gremillion managed Tribune’s New Orleans TV station and operated its CLTV News, Chicago’s 24-hour cable news channel, before he was named publisher of the Sun-Sentinel in 1997. At the paper, he has brought in people from varied media backgrounds in preparation for its multimedia future.
Renowned play-by-play soccer announcer Andres Cantor from Hispanic broadcast network Telemundo will be the new studio host of the station’s NBA pregame show. The network began airing NBA games in November, and it will air 15 NBA games on Saturdays through April 5. Jessi Losada handles play-by-play of the NBA games on Telemundo, and Edgar Lopez provides commentary. John Sutcliffe is the sideline reporter on the telecasts. Claudia Trejos provides commentary on the WNBA, and, along with Losada, co-hosts a new weekly, 30-minute NBA highlights show called NBA Max. Telemundo will begin airing up to 10 WNBA games, which will begin with the 2003 WNBA season next summer.
Michael Carr, executive vice president and publishing group president of Playboy Enterprises, will leave the company after just two years to “pursue personal entrepreneurial projects in his hometown of Las Vegas,” according to a statement released by the company. Carr returned to Playboy two years ago, after working at the magazine in the late 1980s, to help jump-start the magazine’s circulation and ad pages to compete with rivals such as Dennis Publishing’s Maxim and Emap’s FHM. Carr plans to go into semiretirement in Las Vegas, where he was already living part time. A successor has not been named.
Two Texas political reporters have earned supporting accolades in “Journeys With George,” Alexandra Pelosi’s widely publicized documentary about the 2000 election that aired on HBO in November. The documentary followed George W. Bush on the road in his campaign for the presidency. Wayne Slater of The Dallas Morning News and R.G. Ratcliffe of the Houston Chronicle received prominent parts in the film, and they often provide comic relief and penetrating insight into the race. Slater said the film had moments of impressive accuracy, but it missed some parts of the story: “What the movie didn’t show was that we asked hard questions, too. We wrote hard stories on George Bush, on the budget in Texas, on the death penalty, how he made money with daddy’s friends. But I don’t think the movie was meant to be about that.”
Mark Horowitz has been named executive editor of Men’s Journal magazine. This is the second high-ranking appointment in two months at the publication, which is trying to compete with rivals GQ and Esquire. Horowitz, who was previously an editor at New York magazine, will join Executive Editor David Willey to reshape the 10-year-old magazine by expanding coverage beyond adventure-oriented features. Wenner Media appointed Robert Wallace, a former Rolling Stone executive editor, as the new Men’s Journal editor-in-chief in mid-August. Wallace replaced Sid Evans.
Geraldine Kennedy has been appointed editor of The Irish Times. Kennedy becomes the first woman to hold the post in the paper’s 143-year history and also the first woman to edit a national newspaper in Ireland. Kennedy, 51, is a former member of Ireland’s parliament. She replaces Conor Brady, who decided earlier in the year to step down after 16 years. Kennedy has held various positions at the newspaper, including political editor, and has worked for Dublin’s Sunday Tribune and the now-defunct Sunday Press. She was a lawmaker for the Progressive Democrat Party from 1987-89. In 1987, she and a fellow journalist successfully sued the Irish government for invasion of privacy after their telephones were tapped on the authority of then-Justice Minister Sean Doherty.
DEATHS
Walter H. Annenberg, who launched TV Guide magazine and eventually became an ambassador to Britain, died in Philadelphia on Oct. 1 at the age of 94. Annenberg also created Seventeen magazine, endowed two journalism schools and donated billions to charity. He died at home from complications of pneumonia. A friend to several U.S. presidents, including Dwight Eisenhower, Annenberg regularly had leaders at his estate in Rancho Mirage, Calif. The only son out of 10 children to publisher Moses Annenberg, he inherited The Philadelphia Inquirer and two racing publications. He built Triangle Publications into a successful, multibillion-dollar company that included magazines, newspapers, radio and television stations. Annenberg eventually sold all remaining Triangle Publications properties, including TV Guide, to Rupert Murdoch in 1988 for $3 billion. Annenberg was listed as one of the wealthiest Americans by Forbes magazine in 2002, coming in at No. 39 with a $4 billion estimated net worth.
Helen Dudar, who worked as a journalist for several of the major daily newspapers in New York City, died Aug. 1 at the age of 78. Dudar was being cared for at Cabrini Hospice in Manhattan, N.Y., for metastatic breast cancer, said her husband, Peter L. Goldman. Dudar grew up on Long Island and began work at Newsday and the Daily News. She went to work as a general assignment reporter for The New York Post in the 1950s, and she worked there for more than decades. As a freelance writer, she wrote for the Sunday Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Dudar also had works published in Smithsonian magazine, Esquire, Newsweek, Art in America and various other magazines.
Anne Jackson, known as the “heart and soul” of the Texas Associated Press for three decades, died in an assisted-living facility after a short illness. Jackson died Oct. 7 at age 79 in Texas. The former fashion model-turned-administrative assistant began her career with the AP as a 35-year-old divorced mother of two after seeking employment at a Dallas employment agency where she hoped to model professionally. Two days later, the agency called and said, “Go to The Associated Press.” Jackson went to the AP office in the fall of 1958 and didn’t leave for 33 years. “When I started to work for The AP … I thought ‘I’ll take this job until I find something I really like,’” Jackson said in a July letter to the Dallas bureau. “Must have liked it!” Jackson, who went on to work with five bureau chiefs in Texas, was named an AP staffer of the year in 1989, an award given only to reporters and photographers previously. She also worked on bookkeeping for the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors.
Donald P. Delany, who worked for The Times of Trenton (N.J.) for over 70 years, has died at the age of 90. The reporter and classical music critic, who died Oct. 15, began work with The Times at 16 in the circulation department in 1929. After two days on the delivery trucks, he went to the advertising department, where he stayed for five years before moving to the news department as a municipal reporter. He later worked as a sportswriter and editor for the real estate and business sections before covering classical music in the 1950s. He left The Times, briefly, to serve with the Army for three years during World War II. He retired as a full-time reporter in 1976, but continued to cover classical music, in addition to serving as the primary golf writer for several years. Delany also was published in The Legislative News and Mercer Business Magazine regularly.
Darwin Roy Olofson, correspondent for the Omaha World-Herald from 1950 to 1985 and Washington bureau chief for the final 14 of those years, died Oct. 20 at home at Seabrook Island, S.C., of prostate cancer. He was 81. Olofson came to the World-Herald in 1949 as a general assignment, police and county government reporter before working in Washington. In addition to traveling overseas, he covered the agriculture trade, Congress and the White House. While in Washington, he was a member of the Gridiron Club and, for many years, was floor manager for the group’s annual white-tie spoof of political elites. He served as associate director of the National Press Foundation in the late 1980s, and the SPJ Washington, D.C., Pro chapter elected him to their hall of fame in 1987.
Rudolf Augstein, founder and publisher of Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s most influential news magazines, died of pneumonia on Nov. 7. He was 79. Augstein shaped the direction of the magazine, and he contributed regular commentaries and essays. His career began in 1947, during the recovery of West Germany from World War II. He turned a British military occupation magazine into a must-read for the power elite. Readership of the magazine that he referred to as “an artillery defense of democracy” soared from 65,000 in 1948 to more than 5 million. The magazine had a devoted readership, but many times drew criticism from politicians for its content. Augstein was elected to a seat in the West German parliament in 1972 as a liberal Free Democrat, but left after only three months to return to the magazine. As a draftee of the army in 1942, he served in the eastern front, and was later held as a U.S. prisoner of war in 1945.
William L. Beale, Jr., chief of The Associated Press’ Washington bureau for two decades, died Oct. 27 of natural causes at a Maryland nursing home. He would have been 98 on Oct. 29. Beale began work in Knoxville, Tenn., before coming back to the District of Columbia, his original home, to work at the old United States Daily. He joined the AP in 1930 and stayed there for four decades until retiring. He attended 18 national political conventions, and directed AP coverage of 12 of the conventions. Beale became news editor in Washington in 1936 after he covered the presidential campaign of Republican Alf Landon. He was news editor throughout World War II, personally covering the 1944 war conference in Quebec between Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and also the drafting of the United Nations charter in San Francisco in 1945. Promoted to chief of bureau in 1949, Beale was placed in charge of a staff of over 100 in Washington. He held the post at the AP’s largest domestic office until his retirement in 1969. Beale was a member of SPJ, the Gridiron Club and the National Press Club.
Edwin R. Bayley, founding dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, died Oct. 27 in Green Bay, Wis. Bayley, 84, lived in Carmel, Calif., and Door County, Wis. Several chronic health problems had increased in recent months, according to friends. Bayley became the first dean of the new journalism school at California in 1969 after leaving his position as an executive for the National Educational Television network. He was dean until his retirement in 1985. He had previously worked at The Milwaukee Journal, mainly as chief political reporter, from 1946 to 1959. From 1959 to 1961, he was chief of staff and executive secretary to Gov. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. He went on to serve in the office of press secretary in Washington as a special assistant to President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and 1962. During the 1960s, he had executive posts in the Peace Corps and the Agency for International Development in addition to National Educational Television, which would eventually become the Public Broadcasting Service.
Bernard H. Ridder Jr., the former St. Paul Pioneer Press publisher who was part of the creative force behind Knight Ridder, died Oct. 10 in San Mateo, Calif., of complications from a stroke. He was 85. More commonly known as “Bernie,” the sports enthusiast helped bring the National Football League Minnesota Vikings to the state. He helped create the merger of Knight and Ridder newspaper groups, which is now the nation’s second-largest newspaper group with 32 daily papers and a combined circulation of almost 4 million. Ridder was born and raised in New York City, where his family began their newspaper business over 125 years ago. He attended Princeton University and served in the Navy during World War II. He worked as an advertising director of the Duluth Herald and the Duluth News Tribune, which merged in 1982, and he became publisher in 1952. In 1958 he became the publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and St. Paul Dispatch, which would merge in 1985. He also was president and chief executive of Ridder Publications in 1974 when it merged with the Knight newspaper group. Ridder was on the new firm’s board and was chairman from 1979 to 1982. He also was on The Associated Press board of directors.
Carlos Castaneda, publisher emeritus of El Nuevo Herald in Miami, died Oct. 10 in Portugal of leukemia. He was 70. Castaneda worked in the Spanish-language press for more than five decades, and he was editor and publisher of El Nuevo Dia in Puerto Rico for 28 years. As editor and publisher of El Nuevo Herald, he redesigned the newspaper completely, changing its editorial content and boosting circulation and advertising. Born in Havana in 1932, he was hosting his own radio sports show by age 16. In 1960, he left for New York with his family to escape Fidel Castro’s regime. He joined the Spanish-language version of Life five years later in 1965, working as a correspondent, editor, and publisher until 1969. He joined El Nuevo Dia the next year. Circulation for the paper grew by thirteen-fold during Castaneda’s tenure as editor and publisher until his retirement in 1998.
Retired St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial page editor Irving L. Dilliard died Oct. 9 at Eden Care Center in Glen Carbon, Ill., of complications of leukemia. Dilliard, who lived in Collinsville, Ill., his entire life, was 97. The writer, editor and expert on the Constitution and Supreme Court wrote over 10,000 editorials and several books. A graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1927, Dilliard completed a year of graduate work at Harvard University and began work as a reporter at the Post-Dispatch in the late 1920s. Dilliard left the Post-Dispatch in 1938 as one of the first Nieman Fellows at Harvard, a yearlong program for journalists. He served in World War II, returning to the Post-Dispatch afterward as an editorial writer specializing in the Supreme Court and Constitution, and became the editorial page editor in 1949. He wrote “A War to Stay Out Of” in 1954, an editorial series that opposed any American involvement in Vietnam. Colleagues said the editorials went beyond visionary to clairvoyant. Dilliard retired in 1960 from the Post-Dispatch. He was a lecturing faculty member at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies in Austria briefly, before teaching journalism for 10 years at Princeton University.
Eddie Hausner, who photographed subjects for The New York Times ranging from poor people in the South to Joe Namath with a white llama rug, died on Oct. 12 at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, N.J. from a stroke. Hausner was 76 and lived in Fair Lawn, N.J. Hausner, whose career lasted over five decades, was named a senior photographer at The Times in 1990. His work was shown in a 1996 exhibition called “Pictures of the Times: A Century of Photography from The New York Times” at the Museum of Modern Art and is in a permanent collection there. Several of his photographs also are currently included in the traveling exhibition “The Tumultuous Fifties: A view from The New York Times Photo Archives,” organized by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Hausner joined The Times in 1946, where he worked five years on the night shift. He was given awards by the Newspaper Guild of New York and the New York Press Photographers Association, recently serving on that association’s board. He retired in 1991, but continued taking photos for The Times as a freelancer, especially for the “If You’re Thinking of Living In” feature in the Real Estate section.
Greg Nixon, former executive for the Indiana-based Nixon Newspapers group, died Oct. 17 at the age of 55. He was the third generation of the Nixon family to run the company, which was founded by his grandfather, Don M. Nixon. He held several positions with the group, and eventually he became the publisher of the Frankfort (Ind.) Times in 1986, at which time he formed a video and multimedia business in South Bend, Ind. He returned to the family company in July 1994 as the director of technology. Nixon was also general manager for company properties in Wabash and Miami counties in north central Indiana. He had other independent business ventures after the group was sold to Paxton Media Group.
Will Grimsley, sports reporter, columnist and special correspondent for four decades for the Associated Press, died Oct. 31 of heart failure in East Meadow, N.Y. He was 88. His byline was one of the best known in sports, a reputation which came from covering the biggest athletic events, including 15 Olympics, 35 World Series and 25 Kentucky Derbies. A Monterey, Tenn. native, he came to the sports staff of the Evening Tennessean at 18, going on to become sports editor and columnist at the paper in 1935. The AP at Memphis hired him in 1943 and then transferred him to New York in 1947. In 1969, he was made a special correspondent, one of only a few AP writers – and the only one in sports – to receive the title. His “Grimsley’s Sports World” column debuted in 1977 as a five-day-a-week column for afternoon papers. Grimsley specialized in golf, tennis, college football and the Olympics, and regularly covered the Indianapolis 500, the Super Bowl, the Masters and Wimbledon. He retired in 1984.
Donald Upham Reed, former United Press International Managing Editor, has died in Tulsa, Okla. He was 75. He was a reporter, writer and editor for UPI for almost 34 years until retiring in 1983, at which time the service’s headquarters was moved from New York to Washington. Reed continued as a professor of journalism at Oklahoma State University, from which he retired in 1994. In 1950, after earning a bachelor’s degree of journalism in three years, he gained employment in the United Press Fresno bureau for $32 per week. He reported from Fresno until 1963, at which time he was named manager of the Salt Lake City bureau of UPI, as the service was termed after its 1958 merger with International News Service. He became San Francisco bureau manager in 1965, and then Southwest division news editor in Dallas in 1969. In the Southwest, he was a key participant in the UPI Apollo space program coverage. He went on to head the UPI Central Division in Chicago in 1975 and then became worldwide managing editor in New York in 1979.
