Frank Vega to Leave Detroit JOA for 'S.F. Chronicle'

By: E&P Staff Frank Vega, a longtime Gannett Co. veteran who led Detroit Newspapers during its tumultuous labor dispute of the mid-1990s, resigned the joint operating agency Friday to become president and publisher of Hearst Corp.'s San Francisco Chronicle.

Vega's resignation is effective Dec. 31, and he starts at his new post on Jan. 1. Gannett and Knight Ridder, partners in the Detroit JOA, announced later Friday that Vega will be replaced by Gary L. Anderson, executive vice president and CFO of the agency, in an acting capacity while a permanent successor is sought.

At the Chronicle, Vega, 56, will replace Steven B. Falk, 50, who was named publisher and president in March 2003. He had been president of the old San Francisco Newspaper Agency that handled business and production operations for the Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, then owned by Hearst. In a statement, Hearst said Falk is leaving after 17 years at the agency and the Chronicle to pursue other interests.

"Frank Vega has a proven track record as a top newspaper CEO," Hearst President and CEO Victor F. Ganzi said in a prepared statement. "He brings all the vision and the discipline needed to take the Chronicle to new levels of excellence."

A native of Tampa, Fla., Vega began working for Gannett 26 years ago. He was vice president of circulation for USA Today when the national newspaper was launched in 1982. He was publisher of Florida Today from 1984 to 1991, when he was called to Detroit, where the joint agency between Gannett's Detroit News and Knight Ridder's Detroit Free Press had gotten off to a stumbling start.

Vega's efforts to change work practices and compensation levels in the highly unionized papers led to increasingly tense labor relations that erupted on July 13, 1995, when some 1,400 full-time workers in six production and editorial unions walked off their jobs. Vega became the focal point of union anger, and was villainized as "Darth Vega."

The strike cost the papers an estimated $100 million during its first year, and total circulation slumped by about 30%. But management ultimately prevailed, finally signing agreements with all the unions years after they asked to return to work. Vega argued during the strike that the reductions in manning and other production efficiencies were worth the trouble. "We would have waited three or four more contracts to get where this strike has gotten us," Vega told E&P in 1996. "We did not want to revolutionize this thing, but we are not going back to where we were."