Publisher Has Interviewed 4 for 'USA Today' Editor

By: Joe Strupp USA Today Publisher Craig Moon has interviewed four candidates for editor following the abrupt resignation this week of Editor Karen Jurgensen, but said he had not made a final decision and plans to speak with several other candidates.

Moon, who has been publisher since May 2003, also quelled speculation that he might be leaving his post, declaring, "I'm not going to resign. Let's take that off the table."

The publisher would not identify the potential editors, saying each of the four is a current Gannett Co. Inc. employee, but added that none work at USA Today.

"I've still got a few more interviews," Moon told E&P during a phone interview late Thursday. "I expect to have someone named next week."

When asked if more editors or other USA Today supervisors would likely follow Jurgensen out of the newsroom, Moon said only that he wanted to "look at the personnel and structure in the newsroom once an editor is named."

Shortly after E&P interviewed Moon, USA Today Managing Editor Hal Ritter resigned. "My departure will make it easier for my colleagues in News to continue the job of making the newspaper even greater," Ritter said in an e-mail to staff.

And Executive Editor Brian Gallagher, who is filling in for Jurgensen, has told staffers he will likely leave as well. Spokesman Steve Anderson said Gallagher told newsroom employees Thursday, "Craig and I are talking about what comes next. But I will not be in this job for the long term."

Moon's comments followed Thursday's release of a scathing 28-page report on the recent Jack Kelley scandal, which resulted in the resignation of Kelley, a 20-year USA Today veteran reporter, and Jurgensen, the former editor who had held the top post since 1999. The report, written by three prominent outside journalists and entailing weeks of research, interviews and background checks on hundreds of Kelley stories, declared that USA Today suffers from "lax editing and newsroom leadership, a lack of staff communication, a star system, a workplace climate of fear, and inconsistent rules on using anonymous sources."

Moon said those who worked on the report did a great job, but said it was difficult to read such terrible things about his paper. "I would hope I would never deal with anything like this again," he said.

Although the entire report is available on the paper's Web site, about 10% of it has been deleted to protect the identity of some employees and other personnel information. Moon defended this practice as a necessity to protect employees. "One of the things we said was that we would protect confidentiality," he explained. "I think it met all of the objectives."

Newsroom speculation Thursday about a successor to Jurgensen centered around Mark A. Silverman, who has been publisher and editor of Gannett's Detroit News since June 1996. Silverman, 54, fits one apparent search criteria in that he is a long-time Gannett news executive. He joined Gannett in 1986 as senior managing editor of Gannett Suburban Newspapers in White Plains, N.Y., becoming the executive editor of the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star in 1988. He headed Gannett's News 2000 program for five years until 1996, when he was named executive editor and vice president/news of The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky.