'St. Louis Post-Dispatch' Editor Quits in 'Teary Farewell'

By: E&P Staff Ellen Soeteber, Editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for the past several years, resigned her position on Friday in a ?teary farewell? that ?jolted her own newsroom,? according to the account in her paper.

Post-Dispatch Publisher Terrance C.Z. Egger named Managing Editor Arnie Robbins, 52, as Soeteber's successor, effective Dec. 1.

Soeteber leaves at a time when the paper is facing a period of cost cutting and uncertainty. Lee Enterprises of Davenport, Iowa, bought the Post-Dispatch as part of its $1.46 billion acquisition of Pulitzer Inc. in June. A month later, Egger offered a voluntary retirement package to most employees over the age of 50. Just last week, the paper announced that 130 employees accepted the buyout plan, including 12% of the paper?s news and editorial departments.

?I was unable to come to terms with management on the conditions that would have encouraged me to stay here,? Soeteber told the newsroom. ?These included some personal financial considerations, as well as some issues involving newspaper resources.

"But I don?t want to dwell on those aspects, as they were not the only factors in this decision,? she said. ?It?s just time to go. Sometimes, things are as simple as that and as complicated as that.?

Soeteber said the ?high-stress? editorship was the latest ?all-consuming? job she?s had during her 18-year career in newspaper management. Soeteber?s graduated from Northwestern University in 1972 and got her first journalism job reporting for Chicago Today, an afternoon tabloid. When that paper folded in 1974, she moved to the Chicago Tribune, where she worked for two decades. As metropolitan editor, Soeteber guided the local staff in an investigation of corruption at City Hall that won the Tribune a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.

In its account of her tenure, the Post-Dispatch credits Soeteber with stabilizing the newsroom after the 3 1/2-year tenure of Cole C. Campbell it deemed a ?failure.? The article credits Soeteber with emphasizing local news and investigative reporting and expanding the business section. ?She also stressed a sense of urgency with reporters and was quick to voice her displeasure when the Post-Dispatch got beat on hometown news by outside papers,? the paper said. ?What Soeteber couldn't control during her tenure was a rocky financial climate in the newspaper industry in which weak advertising revenue growth forced editors and publishers nationwide to chafe over resources.?

Egger acknowledged to the paper that he and Soeteber had a "healthy friction" over the newsroom budget.

"If you take the spectrum of a hundred things, Ellen and I probably agree on 90% of them," Egger said in an interview with a Post-Dispatch reporter after Soeteber?s farewell. "Ten percent, maybe we didn't agree on. And that was a factor. That clearly was a factor. But I don't think that was the whole factor" for her leaving.

Robbins will be just the seventh editor in the Post-Dispatch?s 127-year history.

"There will not be a sea change here," he told the newsroom.

"If I didn't feel that we could do the job with what the new realities are going to be ... I would not have taken the job," Robbins told the newspaper. "I think we can do the job. It'll be different. It'll be a challenge. ... I still think we can be a great paper."