In September, the five-newspaper Louisiana group hired a regional editor -- the latest sign, I wrote at the time, that Corporate may be leaning toward creating single regional newspapers in lieu of individual ones serving specific markets.
Today, the two-paper Carolina group announced that Josh Awtry had been promoted to regional executive editor, overseeing the Asheville Citizen-Times in North Carolina and the The Greenville News in South Carolina. Awtry is currently the top editor of the Fort Collins Coloradoan.
Coincidentally -- or not -- the president of the Louisiana group, Judi Terzotis, was promoted to that job after working as publisher at Fort Collins. Indeed, as of September, and even as she ran Louisiana, Terzotis was supposed to oversee Fort Collins as well.
Today's move leaves me wondering whether Terzotis is now helping Corporate export the regional editor concept to other Gannett markets. Of course, the Carolinas and Louisiana aren't the first to go this route. There are regional editors for three Central New York newspapers; six papers in New Jersey, and 10 small dailies in Ohio. Other areas ripe for regionalizing are the 10 Wisconsin papers.
Awtry will be based in Asheville. The paper's staff list currently doesn't list a top editor. Greenville's senior-most news executive, Managing Editor Chris Weston, announced last week that he was retiring after 37 years at the paper.
Asheville and Greenville are about an hour apart.
[Photo: News]
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| Awtry |
Coincidentally -- or not -- the president of the Louisiana group, Judi Terzotis, was promoted to that job after working as publisher at Fort Collins. Indeed, as of September, and even as she ran Louisiana, Terzotis was supposed to oversee Fort Collins as well.
Today's move leaves me wondering whether Terzotis is now helping Corporate export the regional editor concept to other Gannett markets. Of course, the Carolinas and Louisiana aren't the first to go this route. There are regional editors for three Central New York newspapers; six papers in New Jersey, and 10 small dailies in Ohio. Other areas ripe for regionalizing are the 10 Wisconsin papers.
Awtry will be based in Asheville. The paper's staff list currently doesn't list a top editor. Greenville's senior-most news executive, Managing Editor Chris Weston, announced last week that he was retiring after 37 years at the paper.
Asheville and Greenville are about an hour apart.
[Photo: News]
This is big news... Awtry has completely turned around Fort Collins. It'll be interesting to see if he can do the same in Asheville.
ReplyDeleteA story on him from CJR a couple months ago:
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/in_colorado_a_small_paper_look.php?page=all
Thanks for posting, Josh.
DeleteAsheville needs significant help. Is there even enough staff to do much there?
Awtry actually upped the head count in Fort Collins. If Asheville is badly understaffed, as the Coloradoan was, they should be happy to get a guy who apparently has the chops to wring more out of corporate.
DeleteDon't forget that the Des Moines studio director also oversees Nashville. Lots of clustering everywhere with the chain. But Asheville is getting a good one in Josh.
ReplyDeleteLots of clusters, for sure.
DeleteHe will meet with each one of you individually to get to know you, and maybe to size you up. There most likely will be a reorganization, overhaul, call it what you will. Those he deems expendable, he will get rid of. Those worth keeping, he'll keep. Managers especially were vulnerable at his last two stops.
ReplyDeleteCan't wait until David Ledford takes over Salisbury. The new Salisbury editor has printed just about all of the public officials' salaries and is soon to be out of ideas.
ReplyDeleteWisconsin has had a regional editor for about two years.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteWisconsin has regional editors at the top, and in sports, business, entertainment, digital and social media. It's been regionalized for a long, long time in a lot of key areas, more recently in others. This isn't a new trend, Jim.
DeleteIn the history of the world, there has never - never - been an instance when regionalizing, centralizing, consolidating .. whatever ... has EVER resulted in a stronger local content product.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, in most cases just the opposite has happened with things like a regional pagination hub and graphics hub.
The fact is, the farther away from the local newspaper you get, the less local content there is ... sad but true.
The BEST hometown, local content newspaper is one where all the news staff, paginators, graphics people, circulation folks and yes, even the business office people - were all right there in the building!
And in my opinion, this de-regionalization was also more efficient and saw high circulations .....
High circulation? What are you smoking, speaking of high?
ReplyDeleteDoes it really matter who the editor for these two papers is? The page counts for these two papers are incredibly low as it is (16 - 20 pages through the week). Oh wait , the spectacular BUTTERFLY PROJECT is going into effect starting February. Another 10 - 12 pages of USAT pages. So why do you need an editor if all you print is wire stories and USAT garb? There's still more secrets to be uncovered in this saga, and as soon as the year comes to a close, it will all start to slowly ooze out. Look for extreme measures to be taken on the production side of things.
ReplyDeleteActually, after the Butterfly project comes to Asheville and Greenville, the news section should contain only local content (and state wire). ALL national-world news will be in the USAT section. They will have to come up with more local content -- that's the way this works.
Delete90% of these papers are AP and other contributing services already. You can't come up with local content when there are no writers to do so.
Delete