Carl Crothers, executive editor of the Winston-Salem Journal, is stepping down effective Nov. 5 as part of a cost-cutting strategy.
Crothers, 58, has been with the Journal since 1996, when he joined the newsroom as managing editor. Three years later, he was named executive editor.
In 2008 Crothers was named as a company vice president, with oversight of all print and online news.
Journal Editorial Writer John Railey will take over as editorial page editor on Nov. 5, the newspaper reported Tuesday.
Crothers has been a board member of the North Carolina Press Association since 2007. Under his watch, the Journal won Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi bronze medallions for public service and investigative reporting for “Murder, Race, Justice: The State vs. Darryl Hunt” in 2003 and “The Unheard Cry,” a 1997 series about Forsyth County’s high rate of infant mortality.
Other award-winning stories completed in his time at the helm were “Against Their Will,” a 2002 series on the state’s eugenics program, and “Unsafe Haven,” a 2005 series on the crisis in home health care.
“My position has become a luxury in these times,” Crothers said in the paper’s report Tuesday on his exit, and that “the need for streamlining our operations from an expense standpoint became paramount. Newspapers need to dedicate their resources to news gathering and exclusive news to maintain their relevancy.”
Publisher Jeffrey Green told the Journal, “We have to scale the size of the newspaper to the revenue we expect. Looking at newspapers our size and somewhat larger, having an executive editor and a managing editor is not financially viable anymore.”
Crothers has been with Media General for more than 29 years, having served as a reporter and editor at The Tampa Times and The Tampa Tribune.
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