9/26 UPDATE: Albright is out, and Gillespie is in…”temporarily.” Hope that doesn’t mean he’s going to decimate the opinion pages, then return to his regular newsroom vagaries….
Here’s the memo:
“Editorial Page changes
by Chris Harte, Publisher and Chairman
September 26, 2007 – Susan Albright, our editorial page editor, will be leaving the Star Tribune, effective Oct. 12. Scott Gillespie, our managing editor, will move over to be the editorial page editor on an interim basis.
Susan has ably guided the Star Tribune editorial pages with the highest integrity since 1993, and I have the utmost respect for her as a journalist and an editorialist. She is a nationally recognized leader among editorial writers and a former president of the National Conference of Editorial Writers (NCEW).
Under her leadership, the Star Tribune editorial staff has won numerous editorial, op-ed and cartooning awards. In 2001 her staff conceived and launched the Sunday Op Ex section, now called “Opinion Exchange.”
With all of these fine credentials to Susan’s credit, it is all the more difficult to say that she and I have a difference of opinion that results in her leaving. As I moved into the chairman’s role in March and then into the publisher’s role, it was clear as Susan and I talked that we had different views of the future.
We have a professional disagreement about the role of the editorial pages and how they should be edited. The main shift I want to see is toward even more locally focused editorial pages.
I believe the role of a metro newspaper is changing radically and rapidly in a world of instant global access to information. I see the need for our editorial pages, like the rest of the newspaper, to concentrate more heavily than ever on local, state and regional issues. This is where we can stake a claim like no other media can.
Our readers can go to many places to get informed opinion on the Iraq war or global warming. But there are very few places they can go for expert opinion on local issues. And that is where I want us to dwell, with the active participation of our readers.
As you know, we will soon be locally zoning the metro news pages, and my mandate to Scott is to move our editorial pages in a direction that complements this local strategy.
Regarding her departure, Susan said: “It has been an honor and a privilege for me to serve as the Star Tribune’s editorial page editor for nearly 15 years. I am proud of what the opinion page staff has accomplished in those years. On leaving, I can only express my profound gratitude to all my colleagues, and wish them all the best.”
I hope you will please take the time to congratulate Susan on a job very well done. She is a true professional who stands up for her beliefs, articulates them eloquently and genuinely respects the views of others. I wish her all the best.
Posted yesterday: It should come as no surprise to any of our faithful readers that the Strib’s, uh, shall-we-say, “progressive leaning” editorial department, under the long-time stewardship of Susan Albright, has for years been a painful, pricking thorn in the side of McClatchy, and now Avista. My partner in crime, currently on a kayaking adventure in Utah, recently posted about management’s directive that the editorial department lay off support for the nickel a gallon gas tax hike.
The latest rumor to rumble around Shake-up Central on Portland has Albright stepping down from her post, to be replaced by none other than Strib managing editor Scott Gillespie.
It makes sense.
Gillespie hardly seems a favorite of Strib uber editor Nancy Barnes. Heck, when a reporter from the American Journalism Review showed up earlier this year to do a piece on the paper’s contractions, Barnes offered a list of people for him to contact. Although all her other newsroom favs were included, Gillespie’s name was nowhere to be found. Then there was the leak that now-vanished publisher Par Ridder wanted to bring PiPress’s editor Thom Fladung Stribside (Fladung declined).
Gillespie is well-known as an editor who has continuously lost vertebrae as he’s ascended through the ranks and become more adept at avoiding controversy at all costs. Over the last few months, he made his bones with top management by following its staff whacking and restructuring orders to the letter, no matter who got hurt. Staffers who once considered him a friend have no doubt that he’d run the layoff truck over them if Chris Harte so ordered, rather than take a stand.
Having Gillespie in the Editorial driver’s seat would not only get him out of the downsized newsroom–where two editors are probably now seen as too many (read expensive)–it would put a malleable executive in charge of what, until now, has been the paper’s last bastion of rage against the machine.
Watch this space.
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