Editor who shaped Chicago Tribune quits

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: Editor who shaped Tribune steps down : Resignation comes amid turmoil in company, industry : To the extent that daily newspapers reflect the interests, priorities and personalities of those who direct their newsrooms, the one you now are reading is poised to shift. : Ann Marie Lipinski, 30 summers after she arrived at the Chicago Tribune for what was supposed to be a three-month internship and seven years after becoming its first female editor, on Monday announced her resignation from the newspaper she called "the love of my life." Her resignation is effective Thursday. : Succeeding Lipinski, 52, will be Gerould W. Kern, 58, who has been Tribune Publishing's vice president of editorial since 2003 and in recent weeks has been in charge of news and features for Tribune Media Services. : With advertising revenue in decline, Kern said the industry must respond. "Some time-honored practices are going to have to change and I'm not going to shrink from doing that." : Kern's appointment by Tribune Publishing Executive Vice President Bob Gremillion comes less than a week after staff learned that the paper, developing a new look to be introduced in September, would eliminate around 14 percent of its newsroom staff and weekly pages. : "It's a different leadership in the newsroom, a different style, a different approach, but I think the newspaper will thrive under Gerry," said Gremillion, who is temporarily overseeing the Chicago Tribune until parent Tribune Co. installs a successor to Publisher Scott C. Smith, who retired two weeks ago. : Gremillion said he gladly would have worked with Lipinski, had she been willing to stay. But, in a note to staff announcing her decision, she said the "position is not the fit it once was." : Those close to Lipinski said she bristled at some of the coarseness of billionaire Sam Zell, who took over Tribune Co. in December upon closing a heavily leveraged $8.2 billion deal taking the media concern private. But she insisted no one factor led to her decision. : "I would say in the last few months it's been gnawing at me as a possibility that's strengthened over time," said Lipinski, who does not know yet what she will do next. : Lipinski's resignation was one of two major leadership changes Monday within Tribune Co., indicative of a company and industry in transition. Former Chicago Tribune Publisher David Hiller, a 20-year veteran of the company who had been publisher of the Los Angeles Times for 21 months, also announced his resignation. No successor was named. : "One of the sad things about Ann Marie's departure is that this kind of announcement isn't such a surprise anymore," said Paul Tash, editor and publisher of Florida's St. Petersburg Times. : Lipinski, who took over as Chicago Tribune editor in early 2001, quickly became known for managing through crisis and change. On her watch, the Tribune not only put out a special 9/11 edition, but had it home delivered that afternoon. Longtime columnist Bob Greene resigned amid scandal. Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent Paul Salopek was imprisoned in the Sudan. Then there was the transition to the Internet and staff reductions, common to 21st Century papers. : "Managing crisis wasn't what I got in this business to do," she said. "I liked finding things out and telling people about them." : Focusing attention on issues such as the death penalty and child product safety, the Chicago Tribune won Pulitzer Prizes in international reporting, feature writing, explanatory reporting, editorial writing and investigative reporting under Lipinski, who shared a 1988 Pulitzer Prize herself as one of three Chicago Tribune reporters responsible for a series of stories about Chicago's City Council. : "We couldn't cover everything so we focused on being smarter," said James O'Shea, who was Lipinski's managing editor before being named Los Angeles Times editor, a job from which he was ousted earlier this year. "Instead of trying to be floodlights on the whole landscape, we tried to be spotlights." : Lipinski referred to the paper's "muscular ambition" and "fierce public-service tradition," and said it was inconceivable the paper would not continue as an agent for change. : The paper she joined in 1978, she said, "was very male, very white and pretty conservative. But it also had this hard-charging take on the news, which is one of the things I've always loved about it." : Kern will have his work cut out for him as he inherits Lipinski's newsroom. He has become known within Tribune Co. as the executive behind controversial studies that used byline counts in a bid to measure productivity. Zell's leadership team has cited those statistics in their call for cutbacks and Kern said they have a place in newsroom management. : "I have spent a lot of the last few years trying to understand newsroom operations, how the dollars are spent and to determine how to get better use out of our resources," he said. "This is what every other industry does. Why should we be any different?" : A former executive editor of the Daily Herald in suburban Arlington Heights before joining the Chicago Tribune in 1991, Kern spent more than 10 years at the paper in a variety of leadership positions. Among his accomplishments at the paper, he edited Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin's Pulitzer Prize winning work. : "That series should prove to anybody that he's capable of directing great work," Kamin said. : At the corporate level, Kern was charged with coordinating editorial cooperation among the company's newspapers. He helped create a new, unified Tribune Co. Washington, D.C., bureau, which opened in late 2005. Kern said he intends to keep the Chicago Tribune focused on its public-service mission, noting research shows readers value and demand that from their newspaper. : The Tribune, he said, needs to get better at providing news that is "personally helpful" to readers, stories that help them make choices and navigate through an increasingly complicated world. He also said the Tribune needs to lighten up a bit. : "I want us to be more fun to be with," he said. : Kern said he wants to work closely with Los Angeles Times Editor Russ Stanton to see where resources can be shared and split, nationally and abroad, and stressed that all newsrooms must accept that evolution is crucial. : As she prepares to leave the paper, Lipinski said the institution is bigger than any one person. "Great men and women have built this newspaper, and they have also come and gone," she said. "Someone comes to you one day and hands you this very special thing, the Chicago Tribune, and they ask you to take care of it. I hope that people think that I did." : (Tribune)

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