NEWSPEOPLE
New hires, promotions and relocations acrosstheindustry .................
Many of the nation’s largest cities have tragically taken the brunt of COVID-19. E&P spoke with three big-city newspapers to find out how the pandemic has transformed the way they gather and distribute news. The following is excerpted from conversations with Rick Hirsch, managing editor, the Miami Herald; Peter Bhatia, editor and vice president, the Detroit Free Press; and Jeff Light, publisher and editor-in-chief, San Diego Union-tribune.
E&P: How has the pandemic influenced the newspaper’s content?
Hirsch: It is extremely difficult for me to think of anything we’re covering that isn’t… Even the weather, in some cases. We’re in Miami, and (we’re in) hurricane season. A big part of our hurricane season coverage will be how will shelters function if we’re still in a social-distancing environment, which clearly we’re going to be in for most, if not all of the season.
E&P: How have you measured the effectiveness and reach of COVID-19 coverage?
Bhatia: The entire staff, including sportswriters, has been drafted into covering COVID. There’s some talk around the country and in the media press about audiences tiring of it. Not here. Our audience continues to devour it.
Light: Visitation since the pandemic was way up, running at 250 percent of what it was for the year up until that point. Digital subscription sales have run about double the PRE-COVID months this year.
E&P: How have operations been impacted?
Hirsch: The CEO of Mcclatchy sent an email out to everyone last week that said he doesn’t anticipate any of us being back in our newsrooms before Labor Day. That’s how far out the expectation is, and part of that is figuring out what that will look like. What do we have to do? We have cubicles that are 8-by8 feet, but can people sit in those next to each other in an environment of social distancing? Should we have them rearranged?...having said all that, I think if you told me before any of this happened that we would function without being together, I’d have been surprised about how efficient we’ve been in communicating and entirely going to video conferencing for meetings.
Light: Until this week, we had a dozen writers assigned to COVID topics, which is a lot for a newsroom of 100 people or so…
We have a team-based newsroom, without the usual hierarchy. There’s no city editor or central organizing role, so everything depends on the ability of the reporting teams and their editors to work collaboratively. We have seen some exceptional leadership from our medical reporter, Paul Sisson, and his editor, Tracy Connors, who have spearheaded coverage that extends across all of our reporting groups. People across the newsroom quickly stepped into new roles and moved to different groups to support what we are trying to do.
E&P: How did you prepare your reporters and visual journalists to work safely in a potentially dangerous environment?
Hirsch: We started this conversation really early on. There’s always been a hero culture in our newsroom. We fly into hurricanes, and we have a great tradition of challenging stories that are not just challenging from the standpoint of general newsgathering and reporting, but in challenging environments. But this isn’t a hurricane. This is invisible.
The impacts are life threatening…nobody is going to earn admiration of the staff by doing something stupid. In fact, they might put everybody else at risk, and I think that’s the real difference in covering this.
Bhatia: Our marching orders for everybody is: Don’t take any risks. Don’t go into a home where you know there are people who have been infected. Don’t go into a hospital unless you’re fully protected in PPE. We’re providing masks, gloves, and have Tyvek suits for people who need them in given situations…as journalists, we are very much “run toward the fire” kind of people, but we’re urging caution. Don’t take any unnecessary risks. Obviously, we’re still journalists to our core and want to do what it takes to get the story, but it’s not going to be very often that risking catching this virus is worthy of getting the story. This is serious stuff.
Light: Until this spring, our biggest concerns were about protecting our employees from hate speech and harassment. We’ve worked with PEN America to provide training and have invested in digital safety tools for our employees. But we were unprepared for the pandemic, and we were caught scrambling just to find gloves and masks and hand sanitizer, let alone the sort of personal protective equipment needed to go into medical facilities. We’re only just getting caught up on some of that. Now, we have journalists being exposed to tear gas—eight, by my count, in the last few days—and are working to equip them with helmets, goggles, and vests.
E&P: What are the positives to come out of this incredibly challenging experience?
Hirsch: People are commenting about how important the work we do is for the community and how much they value us. It’s certainly reinforcing the hard work that everybody here is doing. I’m incredibly proud of my staff every day. They are out there doing really hard work and under the most difficult circumstances.
Bhatia: The demand for journalists and the appreciation of journalism has never been higher. My email traffic, like with most editors, tends to be negative, but now people are saying, “We’re so grateful that you are out there documenting this story for us,” and I think that’s a nationwide phenomenon…the public sees what the press is doing to make this story understandable, real and in perspective for people. Will it endure? Well, there’s no end in sight to the story for now, but that’s kind of up to us to ensure that we’re giving people information they need.—gap
In addition to Gardner-smith, there are just two full-time reporters—one who covers local water issues and one on an environment beat.
“One of the more difficult decisions for small non-profit journalism organizations is what not to cover, especially when…the virus is shaping everything we write about today—from public health and safety articles to the economy, business, legislation, you name it,” he said.
As a non-profit, Aspen Journalism’s fiscal worries differed from for-profit outlets. An annual grant landed in March, which helped sustain them, and they also applied for a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan.
The loan was used just as it was intended— to sustain the full-time employees on payroll without any pay cuts or furloughs.
Aspen Journalism relies heavily on freelance contributors. About $50,000 a year is spent on freelancers, he estimates, and fortunately, with the grants, those relationships have carried on.
Gardner-smith noted the two local newspapers started up fundraising campaigns beyond their subscription appeals, asking readers for donations,
“That was interesting because that was sort of our market niche; we’re the non-profit,” he said. “I tried to find the silver lining here, and thought, ‘I guess we’re all non-profits now’, but at least the papers are driving home the message that local journalism is worth people’s direct financial support.”
THE BERKSHIRE EDGE
The Berkshire Edge also leveraged a Paycheck Protection Program loan to help mitigate some of the financial harm it felt as a result of the pandemic. Launched in April 2014, the digital community-focused news source based in Pittsfield, Mass. has a small team, yet competes with larger newspapers in the region—one that recently folded after 31 years of publication.
Marcie Setlow is the Edge’s publisher. There is also an editor, and both of these positions are unpaid, while two other staffers draw a salary.
“We ramped up our membership campaign right at the beginning,” Setlow said. “But we’ve never been able to cover our costs. As advertisers began canceling because of COVID, I really ramped up the kind-of anemic membership campaign I’d launched a couple of years ago, and we got tremendous response.”
The publication greatly relies on freelance writers—which they had to cut back on as advertising began to dry up—as well as reader contributions.
“We are almost entirely COVID-19,” she said of the content. “It seems to be what everybody is interested in…we are very conscious of trying to satisfy the community and keep the community informed.”
Setlow offered some examples of how the virus influences content, citing not just public health and safety stories, but local business and economics, food, culture, events, housing and real estate, and much more. The information they publish tends to be practical. For example, when stay-at-home orders were announced, the Edge provided readers with a list of restaurants offering takeout and local farms that were selling their goods directly to the public.
“We started a little column called ‘The Stuck at Home Handbook,’ written by a freelancer who is a teacher, a mother and a creative person,” Setlow said. “She wrote tips on what to do when you’re stuck at home with your kids.”
Another popular series covered the issues of second-home owners who came and decamped from New York and Boston. It was a highly charged topic that inspired lots of comments, many of them quite passionate.
The Edge launched a quarterly print companion about a year and a half ago (a 72-page glossy magazine). Naturally, the May 1 issue was canceled this year, but Setlow was able to creatively save much of the advertising
revenue derived from the magazine by creating an “online magazine” section on the website and offering advertisers compelling exposure there at an attractive rate.
The Edge’s pandemic coverage resonated with readers. An average 85,000 unique visitors each month spiked to approximately 125,000, Setlow estimated.
Several months into the pandemic coverage, content was beginning to return to more conventional local-interest stories. The publisher said that approximately 30 percent to 45 percent of the editorial content was still Covid-related by the last week of May 2020.
IOWAWATCH.ORG
Iowawatch.org recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary. As the site’s executive director and editor (and only full-time employee), Suzanne Behnke’s responsibilities extend far beyond news gathering and production; she’s also a mentor to a newsroom team of student journalists who write for the outlet. Prior to the pandemic, the site focused on four facets of coverage: education, environment, healthcare and government.
The site is entirely supported by grants, foundation endowments and fundraising.
“Non-profit or for-profit, lots of people are struggling right now, but we did take some steps to ensure that we were running as lean as possible,” she said. That meant shuttering an office and establishing a new one in the home she shares with her husband and son. She enlisted her husband to help with IT, and her father-in-law, a retired accountant, to counsel her on bookkeeping.
All of the operational changes presented obvious challenges for Behnke, who—like so many parents—were juggling a full-time workload, home schooling and a stay-at-home lifestyle.
“I think the date was March 16 when the enormity of the situation slapped me across the face. I realized that we weren’t going to host several fundraisers that we normally did between March, April and May,” Behnke said. “I realized that some of the projects I’d been working on disappeared, and that the college students we were working with were all going home to distance learning…so, I had no fundraising. Every piece of content
I’d been planning for three months was gone, and I knew that I was going to have to change to a home office. It was like the theoretical dry-erase board in my mind was wiped clean.”
Behnke recalled indulging in about a halfhour of emotional turmoil and lots of coffee. “And then, I thought, I can either sink or swim. So far, we’re swimming,” she said.
Behnke rebuilt what she calls “an army of journalists”—a virtual newsroom of about 30 student contributors.
“I did not expect to do reporting myself, but here I am writing a story or two,” she said, noting that the pandemic reignited her own journalistic passions. “My brain is engaged at a higher level than it was before…fear makes you figure out how to survive. I don’t know if fear is the best way to describe what we’re experiencing, but it was definitely a wake-up call. We were stripped down to nothing, and I needed to create something—and not just restore what had been there before, but to build on it.”
Gretchen A. Peck is an independent journalist who has reported on publishing and journalism for more than two decades. She began her reporting career covering municipal government at a suburban Philadelphia daily and also served as an editor-in-chief/editorial director for a magazine publisher. She has contributed to Editor & Publisher since 2010 and can be reached at gretchenapeck@gmail.com.
Mike Feeley, executive editor of The News Journal and Delaware Online in Wilmington,
Del., has taken on a broader role for the USA Today Network, serving as Gannett’s South Jersey and Delmarva editor. In his expanded role, Feeley will continue as executive editor in Wilmington and have oversight of other news organizations in Delaware as well as Hagerstown and Salisbury, Md., and Cherry Hill, Vineland and Burlington County, N.J. He joined the News Journal and Delaware Online in 2018 from Pennsylvania where he served as director of content and managing editor for Pennlive.com and the Patriot-news in Harrisburg.
Michael Mccarter, executive editor of the Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press, and Alan Achkar, executive editor of the South Bend (Ind.)tribune, have partnered to oversee the operations and editorial functions of most of Gannett’s media sites across Indiana, outside of Indianapolis. Mccarter will work with all the news operations in the southern half of Indiana and Achkar will be responsible for the northern half of the state. In addition to the Courier & Press, Mccarter will work with editors and reporters in Bloomington, Spencer, Martinsville, Paoli, French Lick and Bedford, Ind., as well as Henderson and Union County, Ky, and Achkar will continue to oversee Tribune and work with staff in Lafayette, Muncie and Richmond.
Tom Silvestri has been named executive director of the Relevance Project, a joint effort of newspaper trade groups to strengthen the industry’s unique role as the provider of quality journalism and the keeper of public forums for thousands of communities across the continent. Silvestri recently retired after 15 years as publisher and vice president of the Richmond Group of BH Media. He will consult with the company in a contract position.
Ron Nixon has joined the board of Institute for Nonprofit News as director. He is global investigations editor for the Associated Press, leading AP investigative teams around the world, and is also co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society, a professional association for investigative reporters of color. Nixon joined AP in 2019. Previously, he was homeland security correspondent for the New York Times.
Tom Wiley has been named president and publisher of the Buffalo News. He succeeds Warren Colville, who has retired. Wiley was named president and publisher of the Wisconsin State Journal and president of Madison Newspapers Inc. in 2018 after rejoining Lee Enterprises, Inc. in 2017 as corporate director of sales and marketing. Prior to rejoining Lee, he was chief executive officer and president of the Courant Media Group in Hartford, Conn.
David Foster, regional vice president for Gannett, has assumed leadership over the advertising sales division of the Spartanburg (S.C) Herald-journal. He currently oversees the Greenville (S.C.) News and Anderson (S.C.) Independent Mail, as well as the publications in Asheville, N.C., Montgomery, Ala. and Hattiesburg and Jackson, Miss. In addition, Kevin Drake, publisher of the Heraldjournal, has departed the newspaper to accept a position outside of the industry. He served as publisher of the Herald-journal from 2012 to 2014 and from 2016 to 2020. Steven Bruss, who was named executive editor of Gannett’s Upstate South Carolina papers earlier this year, will continue to lead the Herald-journal’s news operations.
Bernie Heller has been named president and director of local sales and marketing for the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, succeeding Gloria Fletcher. Heller joined Tulsa World Media Co. in 2019 as vice president of advertising and marketing. Prior to that, he served as regional vice president of sales for local advertising with Mcclatchy’s Carolinas region. His career also includes vice president and chief revenue officer of the Charlotte Observer and vice president of advertising for the State Media Co. in Columbia, S.C. He was formerly vice president of advertising for the Dallas Morning News.
Eddie Tyner, Gannett’s president of sales for the Great Lakes Region, will now lead the business operations of the Detroit News and
Detroit Free Press overseeing major initiatives to grow the business, including supporting and guarding the interests of the News and Free Press’ combined sales, marketing and business teams under a joint operating agreement called Michigan.com. He will serve as the president of the Free Press and Michigan.com. He will also serve as the Free Press’ spokesman and support its news teams. In addition, Tyner will continue in his role as president of sales for Gannett’s Great Lakes region covering Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.
Shane Fitzgerald, executive editor of the Bucks County Courier Times and The Intelligencer and sub-regional editor for the former Gatehouse Atlantic Region, has taken on a broader role for the USA Today Network, serving as Gannett’s Pennsylvania editor. He will continue in his role as executive editor at the two Bucks County news operations and have oversight of 12 other Pennsylvania news organizations. Joining Fitzgerald will be: Randy Parker, who will serve as the deputy state editor and Central Pennsylvania Region executive editor; Matt Martin, who will serve as the Western Pennsylvania Region executive editor; Lisa Micco, Beaver County Times executive editor and West region news director; Brian Whipkey, (Somerset) Daily American executive editor and West region news director; Pat Howard, Erie Times News and West region news director; Susan Martin, York Daily Record and Central region news director; and Scott Fisher, York Daily Record, state capitol bureau chief and Central region news director.
Antoinette “Toni” Bush, executive vice president and global head of government affairs at News Corp, has been elected chair of the News Media Alliance board of directors. She will serve for the 2020 to 2021 term. She succeeds Mark Aldam, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Hearst. Previously, Bush had served as treasurer. She leads News Corp’s government relations efforts in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. She also serves on the company’s executive leadership committee. Other Alliance officers elected include Craig Forman, president and chief executive officer, Mcclatchy (vice chair); Maribel Perez Wadsworth, president of news and publisher of USA TODAY (secretary); and P.J. Browning, president and publisher, Post and Courier (treasurer). Other Alliance directors elected to initial one-year terms (2020-2021) include:
Chris Argentieri, Los Angeles Times; Paul Bascobert, Gannett Media Corp.; Conan Gallaty, Tampa Bay Times; Donna Hall, Atlanta Journal-constitution; Lisa Hughes, The Philadelphia Inquirer; Terry Jimenez, Tribune Publishing; and Jeff Simpson, Deseret News.
Jeremy Barr has joined the Washington Post as a breaking news features reporter. Previously, he covered the media industry for Politico New York, Advertising Age and most recently at The Hollywood Reporter, where he served for the last three years.
Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief of Propublica, and Aminda Marqués González, president, publisher and executive editor of the Miami Herald, have been elected as co-chairs of the Pulitzer Prize Board. Engelberg has served as Propublica’s editor-in-chief since 2013. He oversees its day-to-day editorial operations, long-term projects and web strategy. In addition to her current role, Marqués González serves as Mcclatchy’s Florida regional editor, which includes Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, Bradenton Herald, the Keys digital products and the Tallahassee bureau. She is the first Hispanic chair of the Pulitzer board. Both Engelberg and Marqués González joined the Pulitzer board in 2012.
Stephanie Pedersen has been promoted to president and editor of the News Tribune and Washington
State regional editor of Mcclatchy’s four newsrooms, which includes the Olympian, Bellingham Herald and Tri-city Herald.
Most recently, Pedersen served as executive editor and general manager of the Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where she has led the newsroom for four years. She has been with Mcclatchy for 12 years.
Wynn Christian has been named president and director of local sales and marketing for Lee Enterprises, Inc.’s Alabama region. Most recently, Christian served as director of revenue transformation for the company. He joined the former BH Media Group in
2012 as director of digital for its Southern group of publications and served as BHMG’S director of digital sales from 2014 to 2018.
Stan Wischnowski has resigned as executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Wischnowski has been with the Inquirer for 20 years serving in various roles including deputy managing editor, editor and vice president of news. He began his professional life at the Kankakee (Ill.) Daily Journal in 1982 as a sports stringer. From there, he worked at newspapers in Detroit and Lansing, Mich., and Rochester, N.Y., before joining the Inquirer in 2000.
Audrey Cooper, editor-in-chief for the San Francisco Chronicle, has departed the newspaper to serve as editor-in-chief at WNYC in New York City. She was the Chronicle’s editor since 2015, when she became the first woman to hold the position as well as the youngest women ever to lead a major metropolitan newsroom in the U.S. Cooper joined the newspaper as assistant metro editor in 2006 and rose to metro editor in 2009, assistant managing editor in 2011, deputy managing editor in 2012 and managing editor in 2013.
Nykia Wright has been promoted to the Chicago Sun-times’ chief executive officer. Wright moved into the CEO role on an interim basis in 2018.
She joined Suntimes Media a year earlier as chief operating officer after her work as a corporate strategy consultant. In addition, editorin-chief Chris Fusco has been named to the new position of executive editor. Fusco has been with the Sun-times since 2000.
Mike Martoccia has been named vice president of digital sales and marketing for Adams Publishing Group (APG). This is a new position for APG. He will oversee driving digital sales and marketing results across APG. In addition, Martoccia will also take the lead in training APG’S multi-media account executives in more than 130 media operations across 20 states. He also will oversee The High Road Agency, APG’S internal digital organization. Martoccia has more than 28 years of experience in media marketing leadership.
Paul Bascobert, chief executive officer of Gannett Co., has left company after the board eliminated the position. Michael Reed, chairman and chief executive officer of the overall public entity, Gannett Co., has assumed Bascobert’s responsibilities. Bascobert joined Gannett in August 2019 as president and CEO prior to the Gannett and Gatehouse Media merger.