'Mercury News' Editor's Surprise Departure Followed Controversial 'Three-Section Paper' Proposal

By: Joe Strupp Just a few weeks before former San Jose Mercury News Editor Carole Leigh Hutton resigned in a surprise move last Thursday, she led a team of staffers in a presentation to MediaNews Group CEO William Dean Singleton to turn the daily into a three-section paper.

Some staffers, still puzzled days after Hutton's sudden departure, are speculating that that idea, which Singleton and other company brass did not support, may have been the final blow to Hutton's job.

One of several aspects of the paper's ongoing "Rethinking Project," the decreased sections idea was apparently greeted negatively by Singleton and David J. Butler, MediaNews vice president for news, during a presentation in mid-December.

"They made a presentation where they talked about going to three sections," said one source with knowledge of the meeting. "There were some misgivings. I think that presentation was the excuse to say to Carole Leigh that they wanted to make a change."

Butler, who replaced Hutton as Mercury News editor last week, cited the "Rethinking Project" and specifically Hutton's description of plans to "blow up the paper" during comments to staffers last week. He said such an approach might be too bold for the moment, but never noted the three-section idea.

But at least two other staffers said the timing of Hutton's ouster, just weeks after the presentation, raises suspicions.

"I know Singleton and Butler are both concerned with protecting the core newspaper and the bottom line," said Deputy Managing Editor Matt Mansfield, who is on the "Rethinking Project" committee and was involved in the presentation of the three-section idea. "They both wanted to make sure we weren't doing anything to damage the core newspaper."

Sylvia Ulloa, president of the San Jose Newspaper Guild, added that the three-section prototype had drawn concern among company officials. "I think that did scare a lot of people and I would be surprised if that was not part of it," said Ulloa. "That was one of the proposals."

Mansfield said the specific changes would have taken the current four-to-five section design and set a standard three-section paper with all news in the first section, business and technology in the second section, and sports and entertainment in the third. "It would have been a little bit of a cutback in pages, but it was just the sections that they looked at changing," he recalled.

Singleton could not be reached for comment. Hutton, who has said she left on her own, declined to comment on the speculation.

Butler said, "I would be careful listening to other speculation," when asked about the proposal's impact. "The [Rethinking] Project has moved along. Some things I like, some things I don?t. But we would be foolish to make any decisions based on one proposal."

Newsroom staffers, meanwhile, continued to show uneasiness with the loss of Hutton, who had been with the paper for less than a year. Some said that having a third top editor in less than a year was a cause of uncertainty, especially on top of the recent consolidation of editorial activities with other MediaNews Group papers and layoffs of 47 advertising and editorial staffers dating back to early 2007.

"Our members have been pretty concerned over the past year and a half," says Luther Jackson, executive officer of the Guild, which represents nearly 400 Mercury News employees. "No one knows what this means."

Reporter Mike Antonucci, a 30-year veteran and current business reporter, said the paper had been through enough changes: "We need some stability. We want to know we can work with a sense of excitement and a little less sense of pressure at our backs."

But Managing Editor David Satterfield was optimistic: "People never like big changes like this, but I think folks are wiling to give Dave Butler the benefit of the doubt."