Daily News Editor Kelly Heads South...

Timothy M. Kelly, editor and vice president of the San Fernando Valley-based Daily News of Los Angeles, announced Tuesday that he is resigning to fill the empty post of managing editor at the Orange County Register.

Kelly said his decision was not connected to a series of top-level departures from the newspaper in the past six months, including those of publisher Byron C. Campbell; a vice president and circulation director; the director of marketing and public relations, and the manager of the human resources department.

“Newsroom gossip doesn’t impact on my decision at all,” Kelly said. “This is a major career move. It’s a terrific newspaper, more than twice the size of the Daily News.”

According to a Daily News editorial staff member, the announcement “comes as a surprise to most people.”

Kelly had been editor and vice president since September, 1984, presiding over a buildup in the newspaper’s editorial personnel and the unsettled period when the Daily News was put up for sale by its previous owner, the Chicago-based Tribune Co. The paper was purchased in December, 1985, by Jack Kent Cooke, owner of the Washington Redskins football team and former owner of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team and Los Angeles Kings hockey team.

It recently moved much of its operation from its longtime headquarters in Van Nuys to new offices in Woodland Hills.

Larry Wynn, former vice president of marketing and advertising for the Daily News, said he left the paper in May to become vice president of marketing at a Texas newspaper, the San Antonio Light, because of the difference in management philosophy between Campbell and Cooke.

‘Clear Message’

Campbell’s departure “was a clear message that Jack Kent Cooke wanted a different style,” Wynn said, “a lot more entrepreneurial and highly insensitive--just ‘Do it now.’ Whereas Byron’s style was more methodical, people-oriented--’Let’s do it right and in a classy manner.’ ”

Earl Bear, a former regional sales manager for the Daily News, said he started looking for a new job six months after Cooke took over.

“The Tribune had the philosophy that you treat your people with compassion and respect and the business will grow, and I think Cooke’s philosophy was that the business is the main thing and people just carry out the tasks to make the business function,” said Bear, now advertising director for the Orange Coast Daily Pilot in Costa Mesa.

Cooke said he had no regrets about the other resignations, but “Tim Kelly doesn’t belong to that category at all.

“The others I did want to leave. Tim Kelly I did not want to leave, and I’m distressed that he is leaving. But he leaves with my best good luck.”

Kelly, 39, joined the Daily News in September of 1984 after nine years in posts with Times Mirror Co., including managing editor of The Denver Post from August, 1981 through July, 1984, and executive editor of the Dallas Times Herald in 1984.

Kelly said he will announce Friday when he will begin work at the Register, which he said will be “just as quickly as I can.”

His replacement at the Daily News should be announced by Friday, Cooke said.

Kelly’s selection ended a troubled search for a successor to Jim Robison, who left the newspaper in April to become senior managing editor of The Record in Bergen, N.J.

Turned Job Down

At one point, the Register announced the hiring of David Smith of the Dallas Morning News, only to report later that Smith had turned down the job for personal reasons.

“(Smith) and I had agreed that he would come at one point,” said Chris Anderson, the Register’s editor. “Then h