Visionary former Herald managing editor and Mercury News editor
Bob Ingle saw the future. In 1990, as the executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, he wrote a prescient report to his boss, Knight Ridder executive Tony Ridder, about the direction the newspaper industry would need to take to stay relevant and maintain its competitive advantage and profitability.
He suggested a bold, pre-World Wide Web experiment in electronic publishing to extend the finite boundaries of the printed page and create new “communities of interest.”
It was the dawn of the digital news revolution that would forever change the industry. In May 1993, the Mercury News became one of the first U.S. newspapers to deliver breaking news and other content online, via its Mercury Center partnership with America Online. In early 1995, Mercury Center Web — the nation’s first news website — went live.
The architect of the plan, Robert D. Ingle, a former Miami Herald managing editor, died March 16 of interstitial lung disease at his Saratoga, California, home. He was 81 and had been treated previously for lung cancer.
“We use the word ‘visionary’ a lot, but in this case it was true,” said Dan Gillmor, a former Mercury News personal technology editor and columnist and co-founder of the News Co/Lab at Arizona State University. “He saw before almost anyone else in the newspaper business what was coming with digital technology.”
Ingle was born April 29, 1939, in Sioux City, Iowa, and got into newspapering at a young age, delivering the Des Moines Register on his bike. He then went on to the University of Iowa, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
His 38-year career with Knight Ridder, which for years was the nation’s second-largest newspaper publisher, began in 1962 when he joined the Miami Herald as a copy editor right out of college.
“Ingle worked his way up to managing editor before coming to San Jose,” said Larry Jinks, who was managing editor and executive editor at the Herald and later editor and publisher of the Mercury News. “During the challenging news period when the U.S. put a man on the moon, the country struggled with racial strife and President Richard Nixon resigned as he faced impeachment, Bob was the Herald’s news editor, charged with overseeing the final version of the paper every night. I worked closely with him during most of that period and developed enormous respect for his judgment and his skill.”
Besides his wife, Sandy Reed, Ingle is survived by his daughter, Julie Ingle Valdez, and two grandchildren.