Des Moines Register Editor Paul Anger is leaving to be Editor at the Detroit Free Press. Here’s a
link to the story.
This is great. Anger has really done nothing for the paper in terms of news coverage and quality. Sure he can brag about Kauffman’s Pulitzer nomination, but that’s an anomaly. Overall, the paper has sucked since he took over – that’s what happens when you move someone from sports into the Editor position.
Also, this further solidifies the Des Moines Register as stepping stone newspaper within Gannett. Of the 100 or so daily newspapers that Gannett owns, the Register is near the middle-bottom in terms of circulation (with about 150,000 daily subs) compared to Gannett’s other daily papers. And with Gannett owning another 600 or so non-daily newspapers, the Register operates as a perfect management training ground for people to step out of non-daily newspapers into the busy world of a sizable (but not too big) daily newspaper. If they succeed, they get promoted to one of Gannett’s flagship papers (like the Indianapolis Star or Arizona Republic).
Whoever gets picked for job next should make a commitment to staying with the paper for at least 5 years. That way he or she can really focus on improving the quality of the news without worrying about where within Gannett they can get a bigger paycheck and more head count.
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As an aside, if you pick up today’s paper, there is a snippet inside section G, I think, page 2, making fun of a press release in which the Vilsack press office misspelled meth lab as “math” lab. Directly below the fun-poking is a snippet about an airport runway project that will encompass something like 263 “aces”. I will make fun of neither for their spelling errors, since my transgressions are so great, but I think the Register would proof-read their articles a little better when they sit next to an article about a misspelling.
Great catch. The juxtaposition of those two pieces makes for good laughs.
[…] ning today as the Des Moines Register hires Carolyn Washburn to be Editor. As I mentioned before, the Register is a management training ground for newspaper editors within Gann […]
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