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EVERETT, Wash. Stan Strick, a retired executive editor of The Herald, has died from complications of cancer treatment.

His wife Janet said Strick died Thursday at Providence Regional Medical Center.

He led The Herald newsroom from 1992 until his retirement in November 2007.

The 68-year-old Strick rose through the ranks at the newspaper, serving as assistant city editor, city editor and managing editor before being promoted to executive editor in January 1992.

Herald Publisher Allen Funk said Strick brought strong ethics and a sharper focus to local news.

"Stan was the consummate journalist," said Joann Byrd, Strick's predecessor as executive editor.

"If I had just one word to describe the basic nature of The Herald, its reason for being, the word would be local," Strick wrote in a column in 2000.

Jim Haley, a now-retired veteran reporter, praised Strick's principles.

"Anonymous sources were nearly always forbidden by Stan, who felt the public had a right to know who is saying what," Haley said.

Strick was a reporter at The Seattle Times when he joined The Herald's Western Sun office in Lynnwood in June 1980. He had previously worked at the Minneapolis Star and at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and had been a reporter, assistant city editor and lifestyle editor. He was on the reporting staff of the San Diego Evening Tribune in the early 1970s, and in the mid-1960s worked for United Press International in Spokane, Seattle and Olympia.

He earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of Oregon and did his undergraduate work in sociology at the University of Washington. A Spokane native, he graduated from Gonzaga Prep before enlisting in the Air Force.

Strick lived on Camano Island. In addition to his wife, he is survived by two daughters, Kathryn McGavick and Rebecca Dale, and three stepdaughters, Kristen Ophoven, Laura Vargas, Karin Mclain.