In Atlanta, NABJ Feels Shock of Detroit Sales
“It was a kind of stop-the-presses kind of moment,” Detroit Free Press features columnist Kelley L. Carter recalled Wednesday at the Atlanta convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, where she was copy editing the student convention newspaper and recruiting for parent company Knight Ridder.
Messages in her Free Press e-mail account indicated first that meetings were canceled for the day, and then, from executive editor Carole Leigh Hutton, that a 4 p.m. meeting to discuss “the news of the day” would take place.
Before that could happen, an editor gave her some particulars: the Free Press would be sold to the Gannett Co., and the Detroit News, owned by Gannett, would become property of Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Group, which owns the Denver Post. Carter ran into the students’ newsroom on a below-ground level of the Hyatt hotel, and told Free Press columnist Rochelle Riley, former Free Press deputy managing editor Addie Rimmer, now associate professor at the Columbia Journalism School, and Free Press picture editor Katina Revels. “We all ran outside, then ran into a Knight Ridder executive who said, ‘yeah, we gotta talk.'”
The word “shock” came easily to those in Atlanta for the NABJ convention who were most directly affected by the ownership changes announced at 4 p.m. Wednesday.
In those changes:
- Gannett becomes owner of the Detroit Free Press.
- MediaNews Group acquired the Detroit News from Gannett and the News will become a morning publication.
- Starting in 2006, the Free Press and the Detroit News each will publish a separate Saturday edition. The Free Press will become sole publisher of the Sunday newspaper. At present, the Saturday and Sunday editions are a joint publication of the News and the Free Press.
- Knight Ridder receives from Gannett the Idaho Statesman in Boise, and two newspapers in the state of Washington, The Olympian in Olympia, and the Bellingham Herald.
- Gannett takes over the Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat and an “undisclosed cash consideration from Knight Ridder,” according to a Knight Ridder news release.
The shuffle in editors leaves Mizell Stewart III, who in 2003 became the Tallahassee Democrat’s second African American editor, out of his job as soon as that part of the deal is approved by regulators, though the 11-year Knight Ridder veteran told Journal-isms last night that he would remain with the company in an undetermined capacity. “I feel great loyalty,” he said. Christine Chin, president and publisher in Bellingham, will join the staff of the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, the Associated Press reported.
John X. Miller, the Free Press’ public editor who was attending the convention, told Journal-isms that “things are going to unfold day to day,” but sounded like one who expected to stay with the Free Press under Gannett ownership and new top editors. He noted that he had worked for Gannett from 1982 to 1996, when he was deputy managing editor for sports at USA Today and executive editor of the Reporter in Lansdale, Pa. “People have had good experiences with them,” he said of Gannett.
It was learned that Bennie Ivory, executive editor of Gannett’s Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., was offered the editor’s job at the Detroit Free Press, but turned it down, saying he had grown to like Louisville after eight years there. He had been spotted recently in the News’ newsroom. Paul E. Anger, former editor of the Des Moines Register, was named Free Press editor Wednesday.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” said Alison Bethel, Washington bureau chief for the Detroit News. As soon as she got off the plane in Atlanta, she said, she discovered that her staff had been trying to reach her. They “were just frantic. ‘Should we leave the building?'” they were asking.
The News bureau moved a year ago to Gannett property. The changes are so new that Bethel said hadn’t been told yet of Media News plans for her bureau. Media News has its own Washington reporters. “The staff is also concerned about their pensions and that kind of stuff,” she said. But they were heartened when Singleton assured the staff that “”We would not have come to Detroit to [oversee] the withering away of a newspaper.” “I hope that the Washington Bureau will have a leading role in that at its present size,” she said of Singleton’s plans.
The News and Free Press competed fiercely, though they were part of a joint operating agreement. “For those of us who are African American, those competitive walls were down today,” Carter said, speaking of the atmosphere at the convention before the announcement. “It was, ‘what have you heard?'”
By 4:20 p.m., as the announcement was being made in Detroit, Knight Ridder recruiter Reginald Stuart, winner of this year’s Ida B. Wells award for promoting diversity as a manager, had brought the Knight Ridder news release to a meeting of Knight Ridder recruiters in a convention hotel room. Some had already set up appointments to meet prospective new hires, but suddenly they were no longer with Knight Ridder. Yet there was relief by some Detroiters that the awkward joint operating agreement, which left some readers confused about which paper was publishing which stories, was finally junked.
In Tallahassee, Stewart said he felt sad “because I really feel like I have been part of the fabric of Tallahassee. I believe that newspapers should be part of the community rather than apart from the community. I’ve tried to do my job and live my life in that way. All I wanted to do was leave this place better than I found it,” said Stewart, who is 40. “I’m sad about the prospect of leaving. But I knew when I signed up, that when you go into the corner office, something like this might happen.”
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