Robert ‘Bob’ Elledge

May 6, 2020

SAN DIEGO — Robert “Bob” Elledge, a newspaper journalist, businessman, mentor to young journalists, accomplished guitarist and songwriter, and for 12 years an awardwinning assistant news editor at The San Diego Union-tribune, died May 6, 2020, in Bonita Hospice Home. He was 69. The cause of death was acute respiratory failure and pulmonary hypertension, said his wife, Carolina Gusman.

From 1996 to 2008, Bob was a wire editor who designed inside pages of the A section and also copy editor for the news and business sections. Bob was a member of the news staff when the Union-tribune won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for its coverage of former Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham’s bribery scandal and resignation from Congress.

In 2005, Bob won a Union-tribune teamwork award for journalistic excellence when he coordinated the paper’s coverage of the December 2004 Indonesia earthquake. Recalling the evening’s events, Bob said, “I realized while covering the late wires that something was up in the Indian Ocean when reports started coming in of tsunamis in many disparate places after the December 2004 Indonesia earthquake. I notified the A1 editor, then pieced together from wire bulletins and coordinated the remake of three pages to accommodate changes on deadline for the final edition, all in less than 45 minutes from the first Associated Press news alert.” The A-1 editor, copy desk chief and a copy editor shared in the award.

Bob had a knack for writing clever and often humorous headlines while on the copy desk. His front-page Super Bowl XXXVII headline after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers crushed the Oakland Raiders 48-21 in San Diego was “The Bucs Stomp Here” and won first place news headline in 2004 from the San Diego chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Bob was born March 9, 1951, in Aurora, Illinois to Roy and Betty Elledge. His father was a longtime Sears salesman and his mother was a registered nurse. They raised four children: Cliff, Bob, Polly and Mary.

Bob began his long journalism career as the editor of The Stinger newspaper at Hinsdale South High School and was inducted into the school’s hall of fame in 2016.

He earned a college football scholarship and played for “The Fighting Illini” while majoring in journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-champagne. He was forced to leave school after a career-ending shoulder injury. He moved with his family to San Diego in 1969.

From 1974 to 1976, Bob majored in journalism at San Diego State University, where he was the op-ed page editor and managing editor of The Daily Aztec campus newspaper. While there, Bob placed in the top 10 in the Hearst editorial writing competition and was elected president

of the California Intercollegiate Press Association.

One-time editor of the Daily Aztec, Gordon Murray, recalls how he came to admire Bob, his managing editor. “Bob was noticing the same mistakes reporters were making while he edited their copy and gathered the staff together in the Daily Aztec newsroom.” Murray said. “He began writing a sentence on a chalkboard that included the word “which” and explained why it was incorrectly used. He fixed that sentence, then wrote another one using the word “that” and again showed how it was incorrectly used. His calm and friendly explanation was easy to understand and he accomplished so much for our staff in about five minutes. Those mistakes were never seen again in reporters’ stories.

“I was so proud of Bob at that moment and so happy I had chosen him as the paper’s managing editor,” Murray said.

Bob was also a visionary, Murray said. He built a darkroom in the Aztec office for the photographers, who previously had to compete on deadline with photojournalism students for time in the journalism department’s darkroom. We had our darkroom because of Bob’s persistence and hard work.

Bob bought a small weekly newspaper, the La Mesa Scout, in 1976. One of the biggest stories the Scout covered was President Gerald Ford’s re-election campaign stop at a La Mesa shopping center.

When he was publisher of the Scout, Bob started a typesetting business, Qualitype, and published small publications and about 30 high school and college newspapers from throughout San Diego

County. He became a mentor to many student journalists while showing them the ropes of newspaper editing and publishing. He was also founder of San Diego Fisherman magazine in 1980.

In 1977, while still overseeing the La Mesa Scout and Qualitype, Bob was hired by King Features Syndicate to sell comics and features in the midwest territory, covering more than 300 newspapers. In 1981, Bob was hired by the Field Newspaper Syndicate and sold comics and features to more than 300 newspapers in the western territory.

Bob worked as news editor and copy editor at several California newspapers before ending up at the Union-tribune.

While Bob’s longtime passion for journalism began at an early age and continued throughout his lifetime, he also had a love of music. He was an accomplished songwriter, singer and guitar player who made hundreds of recordings of his songs. He enjoyed attending live concerts with friends.

He loved comedians, too. He often told the story of when he and Carolina got to meet Bob Newhart backstage after one of his live performances. Coming face-to-face with Newhart, Bob said, “I’m your biggest fan.” Newhart looked up and down at Bob, taking notice of his large girth, and replied in his typical stuttering manner, “P-p-p-p-robably.”

Bob leaves his wife, Carolina Gusman, his older brother, Cliff Elledge, and his younger sisters, Polly Elledge and Mary Elledge Styler, along with four nephews and four nieces.