The folks at Knight Ridder corporate just had a major Emily Litella moment.
You know how you’ve been hearing that The State is going to get a new publisher — Lou Heldman from Wichita — while our current publisher, Ann Caulkins, was to go to Charlotte?
Well, Never Mind.
It’s been decided that with the impending potential sale of the parent company, it’s best to keep each newspaper’s leadership in place — for now. It’s a bit of a curve ball when we were all expecting a
different pitch, but it makes sense on a couple of levels. The less important advantage is that it saves some money associated with moving executives about. The greater consideration is that in a time of change — and the coming days will be a time of change, however all this shakes out — it’s best to keep people in place who know their newspapers and their communities, to provide some measure of stability and steadiness.
I was looking forward to working with Lou. I was set to have dinner with him week after next to talk about what we’re up to in editorial, but that’s off now; he’s canceled that trip to Columbia. Still, I might get to work with him in the future. I don’t know. Right now we’ve got a visibility horizon of about five minutes around here.
Meanwhile, it’s reassuring that someone familiar will be with us on this wild ride. I know that Ann is disappointed that she won’t be taking on a new challenge — just as it has to be a letdown for Lou, and Lou’s replacement, and the various other folks affected by this. But at least we’ll all still be dealing with some known quantities, and that can be reassuring at a time like this. I think I just said that. Oh, well.
Obviously, I don’t have anything profound to say about any of this, so I’ll shut up. I just thought you might like to know about it.
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Brad, so Bob McCallister wrote about that instability all for naught. Wasn’t that part of his complaint, the lack of continuity with the community and all that? Going from memory on that subject. What was the name of that nifty TV show of a few years back, where the star could look at a newspaper, see tomorrow’s headline and then set out to stop a murder, fire, explosion, suicide, etc? If we had a crystal ball, would we want it? Excluding the lottery of course.
Please excuse my ignorance;but who in the world is Emily Litella?
Follow the link, Harry. Always follow the link.