Tribune Publishing has shaken up the newspaper world with an announcement that it is getting rid of its publishers and giving that job to its editors. That means more responsibility for the leader at The Hartford Courant.
Andrew Julien was the Courant's editor. Now, he's the paper's editor and its publisher. According to a report on Courant.com, Julien's new role comes amid a corporate shuffle at the national company. Among the new CEO's first moves was a decision to combine the role of editor and publisher across all of its papers.
"This is huge news," said Kelly McBride, a media ethicist at the Poynter Institute. "Because it signifies a substantial change in the structure of how American newspapers are run."
Traditionally, newspaper editors run the news business and a publisher is in charge of everything else, from advertising to circulation. The point, McBride said, was to have a firewall between the two sides of the business.
"It preserved that notion that the content the news department was creating was created for the audience, not for the advertisers," she said. "Not for the business interests in town. Not for the publisher's buddies at the golf club."
It was that notion and that trust that gave newspapers their value with readers, McBride said. But readers have changed -- they're more cynical and less trusting of the content before them, she said. Plus, the business of news has changed, too. As an example, many small news startups combine the editor and publisher into one job by necessity. Sometimes it works, she said. Sometimes it doesn't.
"We have seen examples of organizations that have done really well, and we've seen examples of organizations that have allowed their content to be tainted because they didn't recognize the dangers," she said.
But McBride looks at the Tribune's decision and is hopeful.
"At least they're saying, hey, they guy with the journalism chops, we're going to put him in charge," she said.
Julien has worked as a journalist at the paper for 25 years. Efforts to reach him were unsuccessful.
