Some other editors of the year (or any year)

I can be a bit of a scold to colleagues, exhorting editors to move more boldly and swiftly into the future.

As an industry, newspapers have been slow and clumsy at innovation. But a lot of editors do outstanding, innovative journalism (as well as outstanding traditional journalism) and I would like to recognize some of them. I was honored today by Editor & Publisher, named Editor of the Year. As I explain in a separate post, I was surprised by the honor, not out of false humility but because I truly am no longer an editor.

While I am honored by this recognition, I do want to make the point that many editors are deserving of such recognition. Dozens, if not hundreds, of editors serve their communities honorably, elevate the journalism of their staffs and pursue innovative solutions, even in these trying times.

I don’t pretend to know who had the best year, though I suspect it wasn’t really me. Every four years, Mimi and I banter during Olympic figure skating over my contention that it’s not really a sport. While I recognize the marvelous athletic ability of the skaters, I say figure skating is not a sport because the judges just make up scores. It’s more like the Oscars; the winner is the one the judges liked the best for some reason. Editor of the Year is the same way. I won the honor this year, apparently winning the favor of the French judge who liked my costume, my music selection or my triple Salchow. While I appreciate the high scores from the E&P judge, this judge thinks some other editors land pretty impressive triple jumps regularly.

So I’ll share my medal stand with some actual editors who might deserve this honor as much as I do, if not more. None of these people are close friends, though a few are pretty good professional friends. Some of them I haven’t met. Some I cross paths with now and then. I haven’t researched anyone’s accomplishments at any depth or specifically in the past year. I just know enough to regard them as outstanding editors, many of them year after year.

Please notice that many of my suggestions don’t come from the big metro news organizations. E&P Editor Mark Fitzgerald sent me a list of past winners (the award goes back to 2000), and they all have at least twice the print circulation of The Gazette, all in the 75 largest newspapers in the country. I am pleased to bring a smaller organization to the medal stand and I think that many other leaders from small and medium-sized news operations do outstanding journalism and lead innovative efforts worthy of recognition.

Let’s start with three others who, like me, are no longer editors (acknowledging that my being an ex-editor might be appropriate in some way for such a difficult year for editors):

• Mike Kelley retired in November as managing editor of the Las Vegas Sun, honored last year with his staff’s Pulitzer Prize for public service. In a unique situation as the lesser paper in a joint operating agreement, but delivered as part of the bigger paper, Kelley and Deputy Managing Editor Drex Heikes hired a top-flight staff and took advantage of the situation to elevate enterprise reporting in Las Vegas. (E&P honored an editing team in 2008, Sandra Rowe and Peter Bhatia of The Oregonian. I suggest Kelley and Heikes as a possible Editor of the Year pair and suggest some other team possibilities below.)
• John Temple. Another person who spent most of 2009 as an ex-editor was the editor and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News until E.W. Scripps killed that venerable newspaper last February. At the Media Technology Summit in October and at other journalism conferences as well on his Temple Talk blog, Temple shared insightful lessons from the Rocky’s demise. Last month he was named the editor of Peer News, Pierre Omidyar’s new Honolulu digital news operation. Temple symbolizes a lot of what editors face today: A respected editor who in 12 months experienced the death of a newspaper, served as an important voice of innovation and illustrated the exodus of talent and leadership from traditional news organizations to digital startups.
• Bill Watson of the Pocono Record was one of the most innovative editors in the business. With his newspaper now in the Rupert Murdoch empire (an Ottaway paper Murdoch acquired in the Dow Jones purchase) and facing a slash-and-burn future, Bill semi-retired in December. The Newspaper Next 2.0 report profiled the newsroom innovation at the Record. He was one of the first people I consulted with as editor of The Gazette and I know he had great ideas and was executing many of them. And Bill’s a dead ringer for Sean Connery. Would make a much better magazine cover than me (though thanks to The Gazette’s Jim Slosiarek for a photo that looks better than I do).

And lots of editors who are still in the trenches (last I heard) deserve recognition:

• Sherry Chisenhall, editor of the Wichita Eagle. Despite enduring severe companywide McClatchy staff cuts, the Eagle in recent years has delivered outstanding coverage of some horrible crime stories, such as the arrest and trial of the BTK killer and the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller. The Eagle’s court reporter Ron Sylvester is one of the best reporters at using Twitter (he’s had some newsy trials to cover, most recently the trial of Tiller assassin Scott Roeder). Roy Wenzl and Travis Heying collaborated on a fabulous print and multimedia story (including documentary being shown in the community) on the case for sainthood of Father Emil Kapaun, an Army chaplain from Kansas who died as a prisoner of war in Korea. Full disclosure: The Eagle has hired me twice as a visiting trainer and I helped judge this year’s awards for the best staff work.
• Pat Dougherty, Editor of the Anchorage Daily News, has led his small staff in providing aggressive coverage of the nation’s kookiest high-profile politician. I enjoyed reading former Gov. Sarah Palin’s irritation about the News in her emails.
• Editor Ed Kelley‘s staff at the Oklahoman and NewsOK.com won a well-deserved innovation award from the Associated Press Managing Editors. The Oklahoman’s integration of video throughout the reporting staff merits consideration for this award for Kelley (possibly in combination with Vice President of News & Information Kelly Fry or Joe Hight, Director of Information and Development, who contributes greatly to the industry through tireless work for such organizations as the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma and Mid-America Press Institute).
• Pat Rice, editor of the Northwest Florida Daily News, has been leading his staff in outstanding print and digital journalism for several years now. I used to write a quarterly critique of Freedom newspapers in my American Press Institute days, and always marveled at the excellence and innovation Pat achieved with a relatively small staff.
• John Robinson of the Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record has long been a leader in digital journalism at the local level. Editors everywhere should follow the example John provides of leading and participating in the community conversation through his blog and Twitter.
• Lawrence Journal-World Editor Dolph Simons Jr. and Managing Editor Dennis Anderson. The Journal-World has been a journalism and innovation leader for a long time.
• Mizell Stewart III of the Evansville (Ind.) Courier & Press. Every time I cross paths with Mizell (we worked together the past weekend at a seminar of the Mid-America Press Institute), I am more impressed with his insight, determination and focus. In a gloomy year for the news business, an honor for Mizell would provide an upbeat, inspirational example for his colleagues. He’s an editor who stayed optimistic through a Gannett-Knight-Ridder newspaper swap when he was editor in Tallahassee, then led Knight-Ridder reinforcements helping the Biloxi Sun Herald cover Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, then endured the sale of the onetime Knight-Ridder flagship, the Akron Beacon Journal, and subsequent cutbacks there. Mizell remains positive at a tough time for optimism in this business.
• Carole Tarrant and her staff at the Roanoke Times and roanoke.com have been digital journalism leaders for several years. I have previously blogged about her staff’s thoughtful approach to social media ethics.
• Paul Tash of the St. Petersburg Times. The Times was honored this year with two Pulitzers: national reporting for the innovative PolitiFact database project and feature writing for Lane DeGregory’s storytelling mastery. The editor of one of the nation’s best newspapers, succeeding simultaneously at innovative and classic journalism, deserves consideration for this recognition.
• Stan Tiner of the Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., received a lot of attention, and his staff won the Pulitzer Prize for public service following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I was down on the Mississippi Gulf Coast last June and can report that Stan and his staff continue to serve that community well during a recovery that is not receiving near the attention that the disaster did.
• Carolyn Washburn of the Des Moines Register. Carolyn took a lot of justifiable heat in prior years for her moderating of a presidential debate and the decision to cut editorial cartoonist Brian Duffy’s position. And the past year has been difficult for all Gannett editors, with staff cuts and furloughs. But one of an editor’s most important jobs is persevering. Some other Gannett editors who pursued innovation and watchdog journalism through it all might deserve credit as much as Carolyn, but I’ll mention her because I am most familiar with her staff’s work. Through tough times, Carolyn kept one of the best investigative reporters in the business focused on watchdog journalism. Clark Kauffman’s reporting on the abuse of disabled adult workers at the Atalissa bunkhouse was classic investigative reporting. Chris Snider is leading a strong social media effort. Daniel P. Finney is one of the best beat reporters around at blogging and using Twitter. The Register has one of the best journalism database operations led by James Wilkerson. And photojournalist Mary Chind has to be a contender for national photography honors with her dramatic shot of the rescue from the Des Moines River of a woman who fell from a boat. I don’t know what role Carolyn plays in all that outstanding journalism, and I still know enough current and recent Register staffers that I hear grumbling about the boss. (What editor isn’t the object of some grumbling?) I also know the person at the top deserves a share of the credit when the staff is doing that good a job.
• Fred Zipp, editor of the Austin American-Statesman, leads a newsroom that may be the best at using Twitter to engage its community and enhance its journalism. (I blogged earlier this week about @statesman’s excellent use of Twitter last week in covering the terrorist attack in Austin.) In fact, I would recommend Zipp and Social Media Editor (and @statesman tweep) Robert Quigley as another editor team to consider for this honor. Zipp also agreed recently to launch the first state partnership project of the outstanding PolitiFact fact-checking database.

That’s a pretty good list of nominations for next year’s Editor of the Year.

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