Editorial director for Block newspapers named

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

John Robinson Block, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade, has announced that the editorial pages for the two newspapers will merge into one entity and that Keith C. Burris, currently the editor of the editorial pages for The Blade, will have charge of the overall operation.

Mr. Burris’ title will be editor, vice president and editorial director for Block newspapers.

Mr. Burris has been a journalist for more than 30 years and has written widely on politics, government, culture and the arts for publications ranging from Commonweal to The New York Times. His first experience writing editorials and opinion essays was at the PostGazette, when he was a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh.

In addition to The Blade, he has worked for the Hartford Courant and Winston-Salem Journal. For 21 years, he was editorial page editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn. While there, he won the Allen B. Rogers Award for the best single editorial, in any newspaper, regardless of size, in New England in a single year. The award was judged by the Nieman Fellows at Harvard. He also is the author of “Deep River: The Life and Music of Robert Shaw” and the editor of “No-Fault Politics” by the late Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy.

Mr. Burris holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh, where his primary focus was political philosophy. He has taught at a number of American colleges and universities. He was a member of the faculty at Washington & Jefferson College and while there wrote a monthly column for the Post-Gazette as well as a weekly column for the Washington Observer Reporter. He also has taught at West Virginia University, Penn State and Trinity College in Hartford.

Mr. Burris and his wife Amy, an artist and teacher, have three grown children — Alexander, Sophia and William.