Departing 'Mercury News' Editor: I Left On My Own -- Staffers and New Chief Comment

By: Joe Strupp Carole Leigh Hutton, whose editorship of the San Jose Mercury News ended Thursday after less than a year, told E&P she resigned on her own and plans to stay in Silicon Valley.

But she said her newspaper days are likely over.

"I left and I am going to do something else," she said early Friday from her home. "I think it is trying to figure out the right next step. My next step probably has nothing to do with the business."

Hutton, 51, made the comments just hours after the Mercury News announced Hutton's departure. She is being replaced by David J. Butler, 57, vice president of news for MediaNews Group, the Mercury News parent company.

"The only thing I want to say is that the Mercury News is a terrific newspaper and there are a lot of people on the staff that I have a tremendous respect for," Hutton said.

Some staffers, meanwhile, said they were shocked at Hutton's resignation after such a short time. "It was a surprise," said Pete Carey, a business and technology writer. "Nobody had any idea. She was just appointed in May. It means that MediaNews is taking the changes in the dynamic of the newspaper industry extremely seriously."

Added Luther Jackson, executive officer of the San Jose Newspaper Guild, "I really don?t know why it happened."

Hutton's tenure as editor occurred during one of the paper's major upheavals, which involved staff cuts and the increased consolidation of MediaNews Group's numerous Bay Area papers that touched both business and editorial-side operations. She said she never opposed any of the consolidation efforts, including those that involved more sharing of editorial resources and stories. "It is absolutely essential to do that," she reiterated Friday. "If you take advantage of the regional cluster you can bring in more information. The work of a number of newsrooms together."

Asked what she was most proud of during her editorship, Hutton pointed to the paper's "Rethinking Project," in which the Mercury News was researching reader opinions and other data to find the best way to meld print and online for the future. "It was trying to figure out what kind of print product you want to create to maintain your core audience as you know print revenue is shifting to online," she said. "I got tremendous support from all of the divisions on it."

Several staffers recall Hutton referring to such changes as "blowing up the paper." Some speculate that approach might not have been completely welcomed by upper management, with at least one source noting Butler, in remarks to the newsroom Thursday, stated "I'm leery of the notion of blowing up the newsroom."

Butler acknowledged such comments, but stressed that they were only a cautionary view about the potential changes, not anything directed at Hutton.

"We obviously want to continue the process and reevaluate everything we are doing," he told E&P. "But I was a little concerned that with a catch-phrase like that, there can be an expectation of something. The process hadn't even gotten far along enough to know. I was just cautioning people that that is not how the process was intended to operate."

Butler said he had no specific plans for immediate changes at the paper and declined to comment on Hutton's departure. Publisher Jeff Kiel could not be reached for comment Friday morning.

Having taken the job in May 2007, Hutton gives up her fourth news industry position in less than three years. Former editor of the Detroit Free Press, from 2003 to 2005, she left that post after former owners Knight Ridder sold the paper to Gannett in a major newspaper deal in which Gannett gave up control of The Detroit News to MediaNews Group.

Hutton then became a Knight Ridder executive, a job she lost in June 2006 after Knight Ridder was sold to McClatchy. In January 2007, MediaNews Group hired her as vice president of its California Newspaper Partnership before appointing her Mercury News editor in May.