Amari Stepping Down at 'Arizona Daily Star'

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By: (AP) The editor and publisher of the Arizona Daily Star, Jane Amari, said Thursday she is resigning.

Amari, who has held the newspaper's top leadership position since November 1999, said she has formed a management consulting company and will work with newspaper companies, among them Lee Enterprises Inc., which is poised to become the Star's new publisher.

Lee has a $1.46 billion offer pending to buy Pulitzer Inc., which publishes the Star, the Arizona Daily Sun in Flagstaff, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and other newspapers. Pulitzer shareholders are to vote on the offer June 3.

"I'm going to be around all summer, more or less, helping transition for Lee," she said. "With the sale, financially I have an opportunity to try something, and I just feel like I want to do this."

Amari said she also wants to spend more time with her family.

Amari, 58, was executive editor of The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., before joining the Star. She was managing editor and then senior vice president of The Kansas City Star and managing editor of the Los Angeles Daily News and the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star.

She also worked for the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Pilot in Orange County, Calif., and for newspapers in Italy, Philadelphia, Miami, and Detroit.

Amari, who taught journalism at five universities, holds a bachelor's degree in communications at the University of Illinois and an MBA from California State University-Northridge.

She praised her newspaper staff's accomplishments.

"We're all proud of the fact that we've had six years of record circulation growth," she said. "We never had a down quarter. We regularly mopped up tons of awards, and I think over the course of the last six years some remarkable people have played a part in our newsroom."

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