Posted by chicagomedia.org on June 28, 2008 at 15:02:48:
Executive to lead Chicago Tribune
As Smith exits, Gremillion takes top post temporarily
Bob Gremillion, executive vice president for Tribune Co.'s publishing group, will assume temporary oversight of the Chicago Tribune as of Tuesday, the company said Friday.
"I'm only going to be working on this a couple of months, max, as part of my role as group executive vice president," said Gremillion, who will fill the decision-making void left by Monday's expected exit of retiring Chicago Tribune Publisher Scott C. Smith until a successor to Smith is installed.
Although Gremillion is adding interim responsibility for the Chicago-based media concern's flagship newspaper, he remains responsible for the company's half-dozen smallest papers, reporting to Tribune Co. Chief Operating Officer Randy Michaels. Gremillion said in an interview that he will not seek or accept the job of Chicago Tribune publisher on a permanent basis.
The Chicago Tribune, like all Tribune Co. newspapers, is planning to reduce its number of pages and employees, and it is developing a redesigned format, set to be enacted by the end of September.
The fast-track overhauls are in response to sharper-than-anticipated declines in publishing revenue. The drop-off has challenged Tribune Co.'s execution of the business plan Sam Zell, its billionaire chairman and chief executive, embraced when he engineered the heavily leveraged $8.2 billion deal to take the company private in December.
When Smith on June 12 announced his imminent departure after more than 30 years with Tribune Co., he said he had "led as much change" as he felt "capable of," and with more changes on the way "it's important that those decisions be made by people who are going to own the outcomes."
Smith at the time said he intended to stay until a new publisher was named and said by phone Friday that he remained willing to do so, but Michaels decided it was best to move sooner.
"Bob is a fine leader who knows the company really well," Smith said.
The Baltimore Sun and Connecticut's Hartford Courant each announced staff cuts this week, and the rest of Tribune Co.'s papers are expected to follow suit this summer. Last weekend, Florida's Orlando Sentinel became the first to introduce its redesign.
"Many of you are already familiar with Bob, and I am confident he'll do a great job leading the kind of rapid change that needs to be undertaken here in Chicago," Michaels said in a note to the paper's staff.
"I'm going to count on the existing senior leadership of the Chicago Tribune to pull off the redesign," Gremillion said. "I'm not coming in to wave my hand and tell them how to do it. … I know all the [vice presidents] and I know and trust that they can get it done."
Gremillion was named executive vice president of Tribune Publishing 13 months ago after a decade as publisher of Tribune Co.'s South Florida Sun-Sentinel and chief executive officer of Sun-Sentinel Co. in Ft. Lauderdale. He began adding oversight of other Tribune Co. papers in 2005, starting with the Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant.
Like Michaels, whose background is in radio, Gremillion is a former broadcast executive. He was vice president and general manager of Tribune Regional Programming from 1990-97, and oversaw the 1993 launch of Chicago's CLTV cable news channel. He joined Tribune in 1983 with the company's acquisition of WGNO-TV in New Orleans. Smith, who joined Tribune Co. in 1977, worked in variety of capacities over the years, including head of Tribune Publishing, chief financial officer and senior vice president of development. He served as publisher of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and twice was publisher of the Chicago Tribune.
(Rosenthal)