The congressional Standing Committee of Correspondents elected reporters from USA Today, The Associated Press and Congressional Quarterly to its ranks on Jan. 17. Jim Drinkard of USA Today, Jesse J. Holland of the AP and Mary Agnes Carey of Congressional Quarterly were chosen by colleagues. The members will serve a two-year term on the committee. The panel, made up of five members, oversees credentialing for daily print reporters that cover Congress, the Democratic and Republican national conventions and the presidential debates and inaugurations. They also supervise where media space is allocated and distributed for those events. Drinkard received 484 votes, Holland got 462 and Carey received 422. Susan Milligan of The Boston Globe and John Godfrey of Dow Jones Newswires, the two other candidates, received 278 votes and 214 votes, respectively. The three incoming members will replace William Roberts of Bloomberg News, Donna Smith of Reuters and James Kuhnhenn of Knight Ridder. Remaining committee members are Scott Shepard of Cox Newspapers and Jack Torry of The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch.
Former reporter and university professor Karen Brown Dunlap, who came to the Poynter Institute eight years ago, will succeed James Naughton as the fourth president and managing director. The Poynter Institute is a professional training center for journalists. As required by the institute’s bylaws, Dunlap, 51, takes over Naughton’s duties when he retires at age 65 in August. Dunlap joined the writing faculty in 1989 and eventually went on to become the faculty dean. Dunlap became the first black member of the St. Petersburg Times board in December 2002. (The Poynter Institute owns the newspaper.) As dean, Dunlap has worked to hire more practicing journalists. She has also worked to build programs for newsroom leaders and news organization owners. Longtime Poynter instructor Roy Peter Clark has also been named a member of the board of trustees and has moved into the newly created position of vice president.
President and chief operating officer of The International Herald Tribune, Richard Wooldridge, will take over as top business executive of the newspaper. The position was held by Peter C. Goldmark Jr., who was chairman and chief executive until his position was eliminated in January. Wooldridge reports directly to Janet L. Robinson, senior vice president for newspaper operations at The New York Times Company. The Times, in a move that ended a 35-year partnership with the Washington Post Company, took over as sole owner of The Herald Tribune on Jan. 2. At a staff meeting in Paris, Goldmark criticized his release, saying his departure marked “the end of the IHT as an independent newspaper, with its own voice and its own international outlook.” He said other reorganizations, such as in the news department, also would hamper the paper’s independence. The news department will now report to Howell Raines, executive editor of The Times, and the editorial department, which will report to Gail Collins, The Times’ editorial page editor.
Former editor of The Indianapolis Star Terry Eberle will replace Derek Osenenko as executive editor at Florida Today, and Osenenko will move on to become executive editor of the Cherry Hill (N.J.) Courier-Post. All three newspapers are owned by Gannett. Eberle’s father worked as general manager of the Miami News, which is now defunct. Eberle was the executive editor at The News-Press in Fort Myers from 1995 to January 2001, and he joined Gannett in 1971 after graduating from the University of Dayton. In addition to Indianapolis and Fort Myers, he has been at papers in West Virginia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and also at USA Today.
Former publisher of the Michigan Chronicle Sam Logan has come back to run the paper. The Chronicle is the largest black newspaper in the state. Logan worked at the Detroit-based weekly for about 40 years before his departure in early 2000. He has returned as publisher after Real Times Inc. acquired the newspaper holdings of Sengstacke Enterprises Inc. In the deal, Chicago-based Real Times acquired the Michigan Chronicle, a weekly, and the daily Chicago Defender, in addition to two other black weeklies – the New Pittsburgh Courier and the Memphis Tri-State Defender. The chain has a total circulation of 522,000. The Front Page, a weekly black newspaper in Michigan, was started by Logan after his retirement from the Chronicle. Front Page will merge, according to the deal, with Real times. While each paper will operate independent of one another, they will share some resources.
A former employee has been hired as editor in chief of the news Web site MSNBC.com, a spot that has gone unfilled since Merrill Brown’s departure in June. One of MSNBC.com’s original producers, Dean Wright, began the position Feb. 10. The Internet and cable television channel is a joint venture between Microsoft Corp. and NBC News. Before he joined the site in 1996, Wright worked as a reporter and supervisor in The Associated Press Washington D.C. bureau. Wright has also worked for newspapers such as The Baltimore Sun, The Louisville Courier-Journal, The Kansas City Star and The San Jose Mercury News.
The Columbia Journalism Review has named Evan Cornog as its new publisher. Cornog is associate dean for policy and development at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York. The former publisher, David Laventhol, will remain on staff at CJR as chairman and editorial director. Laventhol was named chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists last fall. Cornog will report to Laventhol and Executive Editor Michael Hoyt. Former associate publisher Dennis Giza will move into the role of deputy publisher.
James K. Williams Jr. will join The Troy (New York) Record as publisher, according to an announcement by Journal Register Company Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Robert M. Jelenic. Williams will replace Chad Beatty, who was interim publisher. Beatty returns to a full-time role as publisher of The Saratogian. Before joining The Record, Williams worked at the Times Reporter in New Philadelphia, Ohio, as director of advertising. He had worked in the position since 1998.
Nancy C. Barnes has joined the Star (Minn.) Tribune as assistant managing editor for business news. The 20-year newspaper veteran says she plans to make the business section “more interesting and accessible” to readers. Barnes said this applies not only to news and investigative pieces, but also articles that appeal to a wider audience, such as products and trends. Barnes worked at the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. for 10 years, most recently as Sunday editor. McClatchy Co. of Sacramento, Calif. owns both papers. While in Raleigh, Barnes worked with Anders Gyllenhaal, who came to the Star Tribune as editor and senior vice president last year.
Michael Lafavore has been named editor in chief of TV Guide Lafavore, most recently the editor in chief of Men’s Health magazine, replacing Steven Reddicliffe. Reddicliffe resigned from TV Guide last year, where he had worked for seven years. As a founding editor of Men’s Health, Lafavore oversaw a circulation rise there from 90,000 in 1988 to 1.6 million in 2000. After he left that magazine in 2000, Lafavore worked as a magazine consultant focusing on circulation. His clients included Hearst Corp., Meredith Corp. and National Geographic magazines. Such expertise will be needed at TV Guide, where circulation has taken a 4 percent drop in the past year.
After 18 years as president and chief executive of The Associated Press, Louis D. Boccardi is retiring as the news cooperative’s top executive. The organization saw its greatest geographic and technological expansion under his tenure. A successor has not been found, which has left many surprised. The AP’s senior vice president, Jonathan Wolman, has taken himself out of the running for the job that he has been trained and groomed for. Boccardi will retire in the summer or early fall. The $562 million organization, when he leaves, will have a budget twice what it was when he took charge in 1985. The AP now has 242 bureaus and an enlarged business development office, and it provides news to thousands of member newspaper. Its 3,700-member staff provides print, video and online news to 1,700 daily, weekly and college newspapers. Additionally, it provides news to 5,000 radio and television broadcast outlets and 350 international broadcasters.
Akron Beacon Journal Editor Jan Leach has resigned after working at the top newsroom position there for nearly five years. Leach said in a memo to staff that she struggled to “juggle demands for editor, mother, wife, community involvement and more” and said she had “to give up some of my many tasks.” The resignation is effective March 1. She became editor in March 1998. The tenure saw her turn coverage to children’s issues, such as the ongoing investigative series focusing on shaken-baby syndrome. Also during her reign was the publication of a series that questioned if the Akron Police Department had properly investigated allegations that then-Chief Edward Irvine physically abused his wife. Leach, active in the community, has helped with the Journal’s efforts to raise money towards buying a fire truck for New York City. She also is active in the Millennium Fund for Children, which raises money for children’s projects, and with the Girl Scouts and other organizations.
Alex MacLeod, managing editor of The Seattle Times since 1986, will retire from the newspaper in June. He said that an enhanced retirement package from the newspaper was partly what prompted the decision. “The other was something my dad said to me a year or so before he died,” MacLeod said in a note to Times staff members. “As much as he had loved working here, something he did for 43 years, he told me not to work any longer than necessary to keep food on the table and a roof over my head. Life is too short to spend it all working.” MacLeod’s father, Henry, was the managing editor for 15 years before he retired in 1975. The younger MacLeod came to the Times in 1976 as a night police reporter and rose through the ranks, eventually becoming associate managing editor in 1984 and managing editor two years later.
DEATHS
One of the last surviving “Murrrow Boys,” Larry LeSueur, died Wednesday at home in Washington after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. LeSueur, 93, was one of the correspondents that Edward R. Murrow hired for CBS News to cover World War II. According to his wife, Dorothy, LeSueur was listening to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations on the radio when he died. LeSueur wrote “12 Months That Changed the World” in 1943. The book covered critical battles in 1941 and 1942 on the eastern front. He worked for CBS during those years covering the Soviet Union. LeSueur, a third-generation newsman, was a wire service reporter for United Press when Murrow hired him. In a series titled “London After Dark,” LeSueur, Murrow and Eric Sevareid described the nighttime scene during the Nazi Blitz in London. LeSueur also covered D-Day and the Paris liberation, during which he reported from the Dachau concentration camp. He went on to become a CBS White House correspondent that covered the Paris Peace Conference, and then the United Nations a year later. After leaving CBS News in 1963, he was at the Voice of America for 20 years. The “Murrow Boys” were America’s first broadcast journalists.
Retired Foreign Service officer Arthur J. Olsen, who once worked as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, died at age 82 on Jan. 31 at his home in Washington. Son-in-law Gordon Matthews said the cause of death was heart disease. While at The Times, Olsen covered West and East Germany and Eastern Europe at the height of the cold war. He left The Times in 1966, becoming head of the Office of Public Affairs in the State Department Bureau of European Affairs for four years. He was named as spokesman for the State Department by Secretary of State William P. Rogers in 1970, although the appointment was withdrawn. He was in the middle of a problematic political situation just two years later as the political counselor for the United States embassy. American bombing of North Vietnam was denounced by Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, who compared it to Hitler’s destruction of Lidice, Czechoslovakia. Afterward, President Nixon would not send a new ambassador to fill the post that was open in the country, so Olson was given a position as chargÈ d’affaires, and then acted as ambassador from December 1972 to April 1974. In
Nancye Elizabeth Hawes, 70, retired writer, editor and columnist, died March 8 in Indiana. She was born March 10, 1932, in Somerset, Ky., and she retired as columnist and Sunday lifestyles editor of The Herald Bulletin in Anderson in 1989. Hawes had covered the local and state news scene since 1964 and was assistant managing editor for The Anderson Herald when the two Anderson papers merged in 1986. She was The Herald’s statehouse reporter and interviewed many state and national political figures, including Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George Bush, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton; first ladies Hillary Clinton, Pat Nixon and Rosalynn Carter; first daughters Amy Carter, Linda Byrd Johnson and Julie Eisenhower; first brother Billy Carter; and several U.S. senators. She had been a director of the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame and was a past president of the Indiana East SPJ Chapter.
Jesus H. Perez, 82, died Jan. 10 after a yearlong illness. Perez was a mentor to many young “newspaper boys” who would go on to work as lawyers, businessmen and community leaders after World War II in San Antonio. Perez worked for the San Antonio Express and News, which became the Express-News in 1984 after a merger, for 57 years. He supervised boys selling newspapers on street corners and in large hotels and office buildings downtown during the 1940s and ’50s, and eventually worked in the circulation department before reaching retirement eight years ago. “He contributed to the upbringing of judges, doctors and others who hold important positions in San Antonio today,” said Roger Sanchez, a former newspaper boy under Perez who now works as a vice president of sales for a local men’s clothing store. Newspaper boys were eventually phased out by vending machines.
A senior editor at Newsweek and a gay media pioneer, Sarah Pettit died Jan. 22 after battling lymphoma for almost a year. She was 36. Pettit emerged as an up-and-coming journalist in 1989 as the arts editor for the now-defunct OutWeek. The New York gay and lesbian weekly stirred national debates about ACT UP, gay rights activism and “outing” gay public figures who do not openly acknowledge their sexual orientations, a controversial practice in journalism. She and Michael Goff created Out magazine in 1992. Out was America’s first lifestyle magazine to target gay men and lesbians. Pettit served as editor in chief of the magazine from 1996 to 1998. Petit frequently appeared on CNN, MSNBC and ABC’s “Nightline,” to speak out on gay rights issues. She went on to become the arts and entertainment editor for Newsweek magazine in 1999, where she stayed until becoming ill last spring with cancer.
Former advertising executive Alexander I. Ross, 80, died on Feb. 4 in Rye, N.Y. Ross was a national leader in Jewish organizations. Rose worked at the Al Paul Lefton advertising firm for three decades, where he oversaw many accounts, including one from Beneficial Finance Company that included the jingle “At Beneficial, You’re Good for More.” The jingle received wide airtime on radio and television during the 1960s. Born in Danzig, now the Polish city of Gdansk, Ross fled to the United States with his family in 1940. He was a graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism. He was the national chairman of the Social Action Commission of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations from 1977 to 1983.
Fred Russell, sports editor emeritus of the defunct Nashville Banner, died Jan. 26. He was 96. Russell was with the Banner for more than 50 years and covered every Olympics from 1960 to 1980. He interviewed Muhammad Ali, Ty Cobb, Jack Dempsey, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and multiple others during his career. Russell came to sportswriting at the Banner for $6 a week in 1929 after beginning work as a practicing attorney. Russell retired in 1980. He received the Red Smith Award from The Associated Press Sports Editors in 1984, and was elected to the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame in 1988. He was previously given a Distinguished Journalism Award in 1976 by the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Globetrotting journalist Robert St. John, 100, died Feb. 6. St. John was on the air for most major news events during the 20th century, including Al Capone’s rule in Chicago, Nazi movement through the Balkans, the London Blitz, D-day, World War II’s end, and Israeli independence. After being thrown off the radio during the McCarthy Era, St. John wrote several books, including three autobiographies, including one titled “Foreign Correspondent.” St. John reported for NBC Radio in New York on June 6, 1944, known historically as D-day, and again in August 1945 at war’s end, being on the air for 117 hours and then 72 hours, respectively. At 21, St. John and his brother founded the Cicero Tribune in suburban Cicero, Ill. He was the youngest editor-publisher in the country. PBS will chronicle St. John’s career this month as part of “The Living Century” series.
Wick Temple, 65, died Feb. 1. Temple worked as an Associated Press vice president for four decades, during which time he gathered news in the civil-rights-era South and led sports, news, personnel and newspaper membership departments. Temple headed AP bureaus in St. Louis, Helena, Mont., and Seattle, before coming to New York as a sports editor in 1973. He directed coverage of the Olympics, the Super Bowl and the World Series in the sports department. He received a promotion to managing editor in 1980 and then to a position as the AP’s first director of human resources in 1985. The second-generation AP newsman had been AP’s director of membership since 1988. He began in news at 16 at the Texarkana Gazette.
Former Associated Press reporter Barbara Wace, 95, died Jan. 16 in London. Wace was one of just a few female journalists who was on location in European battlefields during World War II. She went to France in July 1944, a month after D-Day, at a time when women were rarely given war assignments. She was on her way to the newly liberated Paris in August 1944 when her editor instead sent her to the port city of Brest, where 38,000 Germans had been cornered in the village and had holed up in concrete submarine bunkers. They were holding off 80,000 American troops. “I was relieved at Brest just before it was taken. By a man. His name went on the story,” she recalled in 1995. Wace did get in the final word, however, when the German forces finally surrendered the submarine base after the 46-day siege by Americas. Wace had lost a bedroll with her cloths, and sent the following telegram to the London AP bureau: “Skirt Lost, Brest Fallen.” After the war and the AP, Wace worked as a freelance writer and photographer until her 80s.
Francoise Giroud, co-founder of one of France’s top news magazines and a great force in French postwar journalism, died Jan. 19. She was 86. The novelist and former Cabinet minister was being treated for a head injury after a fall, and she died at the American Hospital outside Paris where she was being treated. Her weekly column was published in Le Nouvel Observateau. Giroud ran France’s Elle magazine for eight years and then co-founded L’Express news weekly with Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber in 1953. At a time when few women worked in news, Giroud began pushing them into the field and helped journalists make their writing style more concise and understandable. Giroud entered politics briefly in the 1970s as a Cabinet member. She worked as secretary of state for the condition of women from 1974 to 1976, and then as secretary of state for culture from 1976 to 1977. She began her column for Le Nouvel Observateuu in 1983 and did not miss a week up to her death.
James H. Hale, retired newspaper executive and publisher of The Kansas City Star, died at age 75 of natural causes at a hospital in Denison, Texas, on Jan. 12. Hale retired as president and CEO of the San Francisco Newspaper Agency seven years ago. The Agency was a business and publishing arm of the Chronicle and Examiner. He came to the position just five months after retiring as publisher of The Kansas City Star in December 1992. According to Hale, his most difficult decision emotionally was an easy one financially – that of merging the afternoon Kansas City Star with the morning Kansas City Times in March 1990. The next year, the paper won a third Pulitzer Prize under Hale’s watch, for a series about the U.S. Department of Agriculture and mismanagement. Hale said the Pulitzers were one of his proudest achievements.
Author and former Washington journalist Henry “Hank Trewhitt, 75, died Jan. 23 in Albuquerque. The banjo-playing journalist, who sang with other reporters in a bluegrass music group known as The Informed Sources, worked predominantly at the Baltimore Sun. The former Washington resident was at the Sun from 1957 until 1967, worked as a diplomatic and White House correspondent for Newsweek and then went back to the Sun from 1974 to 1985. He was deputy managing editor for international affairs at U.S. News & World Report in 1989 when he retired. The former panelist for “Washington Week in Review,” a PBS news program, also wrote a 1971 book titled “McNamara: His Ordeal in the Pentagon,” which dealt with Vietnam War-era Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and was well-received.
