Carroll's Retirement: the Search for Answers

Reaction to Carroll's resignation: 1) Sad loss for the newspaper and 2) He got tired of fighting budget wars with the Tribune Co. From the American Journalism Review: There apparently was no one incident that triggered Carroll's decision. Rather, it seems he just couldn't be sure that he would have the resources to put out the kind of paper he wanted and needed to. If there's a silver lining, it's the fact that Dean Baquet, a superb journalist, is succeeding Carroll. Carroll hired Baquet away from the New York Times in 2000 to be the Times' managing editor, and the two functioned as a true team. Baquet is one of those rare figures in journalism about whom no one ever seems to speak a negative word. Nevertheless, Baquet hardly has Carroll's experience when it comes to surviving budget wars. It's hard to see how he can prevail where Carroll couldn't. But Baquet does have Tribune Co. roots--he worked for the Chicago Tribune from 1984 until 1990--that may serve him well. The AJR suggests that the June departure of publisher John Puerner, a close ally of Carroll's, may have contributed to Carroll's decision to leave the paper. Meanwhile, Carroll tells Editor & Publisher that he isn't leaving journalism, and plans to return to work somewhere after a long vacation (perhaps, at his wife's suggestion, driving around the country for four months). He is fairly candid about his frustrations with his shrinking budget: The outgoing editor, whose last day will be Aug. 15, admitted that several factors played into his decision, a change he had been contemplating for more than a year. "There are multiple things," he said, including the budget cuts the paper has had to endure in recent years. "I can't say that I was thrilled by them," he said of the cuts that eliminated more than 60 editorial positions last year. "But my thinking has developed over time. I think I have given just about all I could for the paper. I think I could do more, but it is time to turn it over to someone else." (links via Romenesko)

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Carroll's Retirement: the Search for Answers

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