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Ga. Editor Ben Holden Named to Academic Post

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Ga. Editor Ben Holden Named to Academic Post

Ben Holden, vice president and executive editor of the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer, has been named director of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for the Courts and Media http://courtsandmedia.org/latestnews/app-news/0/3/reynolds-national-center-for-courts-and-media-names-director/
, a part of the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada that examines the tension between courts and the media, the school announced on Friday.

 

Holden, a lawyer as well as a journalist, said he was recruited by a
former Knight Ridder colleague, Jerry Ceppos, dean of the school, who took a suggestion from Bryan Monroe, who worked under Ceppos when Ceppos was vice president for news at Knight Ridder. The Ledger-Enquirer was sold to McClatchy after Knight Ridder collapsed in 2006.

"It would be a mistake for any of my friends and colleagues to read this as giving up on newspapers," Holden, 46, told
Journal-isms. "It has not been a fun 2009, compared to 1981, when I was a summer intern at the Post-Dispatch in St. Louis and
the world was my oyster, but there are some signs, at least within
McClatchy, that things have stabilized. We are holding our own and making strides.

"I’m not running from something, I’m going to something."

The Reynolds Center was inspired by the conflicts between the media and the courts in the O.J. Simpson criminal trial of 1995, Holden said. Today it examines such issues as the place of social media and cameras in courtrooms.

"To date," Holden said in a statement, ”no clear voice has emerged on the American policy landscape to articulate the proper balance between our constitutional guarantees to open courts on the one hand and fair criminal trials on the other. This center can become that voice."

Holden, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has been executive editor of the Ledger-Enquirer for 5-1/2 years. Earlier, he was deputy managing editor of the Desert Sun in Palm Springs and senior editor for business and sports at the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal, both Gannett newspapers. Prior to Gannett, Holden was assistant to the president of the McClatchy Co., a bio said.

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