'Ventura County Star' Publisher Gallagher Resigning

By: Mark Fitzgerald Ventura County Star President and Publisher Tim Gallagher is leaving the California to start a media management consulting business, and serve in an as yet undefined capacity as assistant to Mark Contreras, senior vice president of parent E.W. Scripps newspaper division.

Gallagher will remain at the paper until mid-September, when Scripps is expected to settle on a replacement. Contreras said in a statement that the chain is conducting its search for a publisher from both inside and outside the Star.

In a column in Sunday's Star, Gallagher said he was following in his parents path as a "risk-taker" in starting a new business.

"Since the move was announced, a lot of people are asking me what's gotten into me," he wrote. "Why leave the comfort and stability of a company where I have worked for nearly 30 years to go out and take a risk on something new? And my answer is: I am my parents' son."

Gallagher recalled that when he was 16 his parents uprooted the family from its native Brooklyn to settle in "a windy, dusty cow town called Albuquerque, N.M." As a teen, he thought they were "just about the stupidest parents a 16-year-old could be cursed with." When his father died three years ago, however, Gallagher began to understand why they took the risk of relocation.

"Gradually, my life's interest had taken me toward a fascination with how people got their ideas to start a business, how they were running the business and what made them successful," he wrote. "I'm just brazen enough to think I can do the same by starting a business that helps them grow theirs. Cockiness runs in Irishmen."

Gallagher was not immediately available for comment, his office said.

Gallagher, 51, joined the Star as editor in 1995. He was named president in 2000, and became publisher in 2004. He has spent his entire newspaper career with Scripps, beginning as an intern and then reporter at The Albuquerque Tribune. He was editor of the Tribune from 1987 until joining the Star.

In his column, Gallagher said, "These past eight months have been the most turbulent of times I have seen" in the newspaper business. In recent months, the Star made voluntary buyout offers to nine employees. Last year, Managing Editor Richard Luna resigned after reports surfaced publicly that he had pressured a sports reporter to provide him press credentials so he could attend two Final Four college basketball tournament games. He did not cover the games.

Scripps newspaper chief Contreras said Gallagher's new part-time position "will allow Tim to continue his entrepreneurial interests independently while at the same time helping us in a variety of significant ways."