THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 24, 1996 TAG: 9608260305
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF REPORT
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 78 lines
The Virginian-Pilot's editor of the past three years is leaving Hampton Roads for the top editing job at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Cole C. Campbell, who brought sweeping change to The Pilot's design, reporting style and the personality of its newsroom, was named editor-in-chief of Missouri's largest daily Friday morning.
Campbell, 43, will take command of the Post-Dispatch's news and editorial operations Oct. 7. He will remain in Norfolk until late September.
``I regret that Cole is leaving The Pilot,'' said R. Bruce Bradley, The Pilot's publisher. ``He has been a key contributor in setting the strategic direction for our company, and he has attracted many talented journalists to our newsroom.''
After a meeting announcing the departure to The Pilot's news department staff Friday morning, Bradley praised Campbell for the paper's ``strategy of providing comprehensive and meaningful local news for our readers.''
Reached in St. Louis, where he was introduced to the 340,000-circulation newspaper's staff,
Campbell said he found it difficult to leave Hampton Roads.
``This was a hard choice to make,'' he said. ``I'll miss the entire staff of The Pilot. It's a capable and dynamic group of people who are doing extremely interesting things in journalism.
``And I'll miss living in Hampton Roads.''
Campbell's appointment ends a high-profile, sometimes-controversial tenure at The Pilot that began with his arrival as a senior editor in 1990.
Promoted to managing editor in 1991 and to editor in October 1993, the Roanoke native emerged in the newspaper industry as an exponent of ``public journalism,'' which calls on papers to concentrate their reporting on citizens' expectations, hopes and fears, rather than public institutions and ``horse race'' campaign coverage.
The movement has generated sharp debate within the newspaper industry.
Campbell's editorship also saw The Pilot embark on a six-day retreat at which reporters, editors and executives brainstormed ways to improve the paper.
That retreat, held last January and February, spawned a newsroom reorganization and the paper's renewed emphasis on local news.
``We're trying to make the news report more useful and relevant,'' said Dennis Hartig, who was named interim editor.
``Cole really challenged the newsroom to examine the way we were doing our journalism, to find out what was working and what wasn't.''
Campbell's work here followed stints as a reporter and editor at the Daily Tarheel, the student newspaper at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, at the now-defunct Tarheel Magazine and at the News & Record in Greensboro.
With Friday's announcement, Campbell moves to the flagship of the Pulitzer Publishing Co., and the paper that launched Joseph Pulitzer's career as a publisher.
It is also a newspaper bedeviled by stiff competition from a well-organized and well-financed chain of suburban papers, and by such a decline in circulation that today it reaches only one in three households in greater St. Louis.
That decline has occurred despite the closure of its print competition - most notably The St. Louis Globe-Democrat, in 1986, and the short-lived St. Louis Sun, in 1990.
At the same time, the Post-Dispatch has been beset with management troubles that prompted its last executive editor, William F. Woo, to retire July 15, and its managing editor of four years, Foster Davis, to quit in April.
Campbell said he looked forward to his new assignment, and that he would leave The Pilot satisfied with his years here.
``I'm proudest of the way the paper thinks about readers first in making decisions about what and how to cover the news,'' he said. ``And related to that, I'm very proud of the way the people of The Virginian-Pilot help each other become stronger journalists.''
Bradley said that he will seek Campbell's permanent replacement from within The Pilot or its parent company, Landmark Communications Inc., and that The Pilot would begin to invite applications sometime in the next few weeks. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Editor Cole C. Campbell
KEYWORDS: COLE CAMPBELL RESIGNATION by CNB