Royhab Retires at 'Blade,' Kushma Gets Post

By: E&P Staff Ron Royhab, longtime executive editor and vice president at the The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, will retire on January 1. John Robinson Block, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Blade, announced today that David Kushma, 55, will become the new editor.

He also promoted Managing Editor Kurt Franck to executive editor and Dave Murray, special assignments editor, to managing editor.

"We have great people going forward," Block told the newspaper's staff in a packed newsroom, according to a story on the paper's site. "This is a proud newspaper and I obviously want to leave you all with the sense that we have our future ahead of us."

Royhab said, "It has been an honor for me to lead The Blade's newsroom for the past 16 years. I was fortunate to have worked with such a terrific staff of journalists during my time here."

David Shutt, editorial director, also is retiring at the end of the year.

Kushma has served as editorial page editor of the Commercial Appeal in Memphis and associate editor at the Detroit Free Press. He has been managing his own communications company in the Detroit area.

More from The Blade story follows.
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Franck, 53, joined The Blade in 2000 as managing editor after 16 years in a variety of editing positions at the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Prior to that, Mr. Franck spent six years with United Press International, working in bureaus in Columbus, Atlanta, Birmingham, Ala., Orlando, Fla., the Kennedy Space Center, and Miami.

Mr. Murray, 54, has worked at The Blade for more than 30 years, first as a reporter, then as city editor before becoming special assignments editor. Mr. Murray has edited numerous award-winning stories, including The Blade's 2003 Pulitzer Prize winning series on unreported atrocities during the Vietnam War, and two Pulitizer finalists ? an investigation in 1999 into the American beryllium industry and The Blade's 2005 "Coingate" coverage.

Mr. Royhab's journalism career spanned more than 40 years. He spent 25 years with Scripps Howard Newspapers in various reporting and editing positions, including chief of the Columbus Bureau, and assistant managing editor of Scripps Howard's Washington bureau before joining The Blade in 1993. He was promoted to executive editor of The Blade in 1997, and became a vice president in 2004.

During his tenure at The Blade, the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for investigative reporting and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2000 and 2006.