Says Only Columnist’s Job Could Have Kept Him
Don Wycliff, for six years the public editor of the Chicago Tribune and for nine years before that its editorial page editor, is leaving the newspaper business to become associate vice president for news and information at his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, the school announced today.
Wycliff, 59, is to be the university’s chief spokesman. He told Journal-isms he was leaving for “a combination of personal and professional reasons” — his children are almost grown, he and his wife are divorcing, and “it was time to throw the cast up in the air and see where it lands. I’ve got one more cattle drive in me and I want to do it at Notre Dame, which has always mattered to me, and so when this opportunity came along, I decided to do it.”
The only thing that could have kept him from taking the Notre Dame job was an offer to become a general-interest columnist, he said, a desire he said had made known to several people at the paper over the years. Wycliff’s last day will be March 10. Editor Ann Marie Lipinski confirmed the news at a meeting of news managers today, then notified the rest of the staff. It is she who will name a new public editor, or reader representative.
Notre Dame’s announcement said Wycliff will be working on communications issues and initiatives with Hilary Crnkovich, vice president for public affairs and communication, “and lead outreach efforts to the news media in all its forms — print, electronic and Web-based.”
“This Notre Dame position is not some sort of second-best thing for me,” Wycliff continued via e-mail. “When I began teaching at Notre Dame last year (I taught a media criticism course last spring semester and am doing the same thing this semester), I hoped that I eventually would go to ND fulltime in some capacity. This associate VP position came along unexpectedly, but at just the right time in terms of my changed personal circumstances. Notre Dame and the education it gave me have been responsible for all I’ve been able to achieve; this is my chance to make a living contribution to the place.”
As the news release noted, “Aside from one year as an admissions counselor at Notre Dame, Wycliff has spent his entire career in journalism.”
Before becoming one of first African Americans to lead a mainstream editorial page, at the Tribune, Wycliff was a member of the editorial board at the New York Times for more than five years and served as an editor in The Times’ Week in Review section. He worked as a reporter and editor at several other newspapers, including the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Houston Post and the Dallas Times Herald.
Wycliff has been an active member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, for which he currently is a member of the board of directors and chair of the Ethics and Values Committee, Notre Dame noted.
In a mini-bio in the Tribune on Dec. 28, 2003, Wycliff wrote:
“I was born in 1946, the year after the end of World War II and the best of all possible years for a black American child to be born–except for every year since. I turned 57 a few days ago and, as is so often the case nowadays, found myself at one moment that day with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.
“What a long way I’ve come! What a long way we African-Americans have come! What a long way we Americans have come! I like to think that I’ve not only benefited from all the changes over the last 57 years but also have helped to make them.
“I’ve been at the Tribune now for more than 13 years. For nine of those years, I was Editorial page editor. For the last three years, I’ve been public editor, a job I’m still learning to define and to do.
“The defining was made both easier and harder by the blockbuster event in American journalism this year: the Jayson Blair scandal at The New York Times. The Blair affair certified and underscored the wisdom of a number of things we had been doing for several years already at the Tribune: an aggressive program of error-tracking and corrections, a policy of annually evaluating each staff member’s performance, and an effort to explain to the public how newsroom decisions are made.
“It is this last item–explaining the newspaper to the public–that preoccupies me. I do it in a number of ways–by talking to individual readers over the phone, responding to them via e-mail or traditional “snail mail,” and writing a column that appears every Thursday on the Commentary page.
“Every once in a while, I get a response that seems to validate my efforts, like this one that came a few weeks ago from Kerry Kleiber of Lafayette, Ind.: ‘You’re candid and, as far as I can tell, never self-defensive. . . . I always understand your argument and I have confidence that when you know you or the Tribune is wrong, that it will be admitted and, if possible, corrected.’
“I couldn’t ask for more.”
- Don Wycliff, Chicago Tribune: Thinking out loud (on cartoon controversy)