Philadelphia Inquirer Editor to Retire
Eugene L. Roberts Jr., one of the most honored newspaper editors in America, stunned his staff Tuesday by announcing that he will retire Sept. 1 as executive editor and president of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Roberts, 58, made his name as a champion of hard investigative reporting, editorial independence and the idea that an aggressive, even antagonistic product would win readers and eventually financial success. His transformation of the beleaguered Inquirer in the 1970s and its ultimate victory over the rival Bulletin seemed to prove his theory.
Roberts said he had anticipated early retirement as long as three years ago but stayed because of “family responsibilities that made it seem the wrong time.” But many in the industry and at his newspaper believe that Roberts became disenchanted with changes at Knight-Ridder Inc., the paper’s owner. The Miami-based company has recently emphasized strict profit targets and publicly stressed that journalists should see themselves as serving customers and not simply providing news and acting as watchdogs over government.
“The corporate mentality at Knight-Ridder has changed,” said one Inquirer reporter. “For the last few years, it has been us (the Inquirer) against them (Knight-Ridder), and it looks like ‘them’ won.”
Despite the comments of many staffers and outside observers, Knight-Ridder executives praised Roberts in statements issued Tuesday.
“Gene Roberts has brought great honor to The Inquirer, to Knight-Ridder and to the profession of newspaper editing in this country,” Knight-Ridder Chairman and Chief Executive James K. Batten said. “His is a unique record that will long stand as an inspiration for others to follow.”
Roberts will be replaced by Maxwell E. P. King, 46, a protege and longtime editor who for the past three years has been running the paper’s circulation department. He will have the title of editor of the Inquirer and executive vice president of Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
King, who is the maternal grandson of legendary book editor Maxwell Perkins and the brother of actor Perry King, was picked by the publisher and Knight-Ridder’s corporate staff, but Roberts said he was consulted at length about potential successors. Inquirer Managing Editor Gene Foreman will become executive editor, and Deputy Managing Editor James Naughton will become managing editor.
Roberts said in an interview that he will now travel and perhaps eventually take a teaching position. He will also serve as a consultant to Knight-Ridder.
In his 18 years in Philadelphia, Roberts’ paper won a startling 17 Pulitzer prizes, its circulation rose nearly 20% and it transformed itself from a paper “flat on its back journalistically to one with few peers,” said Craig Ammerman, former editor of the rival Philadelphia Bulletin. The Inquirer eventually surpassed the Bulletin, which closed in 1982, and inspired a movement within the industry in which newspaper chains known for journalistic quality bought struggling papers and tried to outdo the local competition.
None, however, was able to duplicate Roberts’ achievement, including his own company, which failed to repeat that success in Detroit.
In recent years, Roberts has had sharp clashes with Knight-Ridder management over his budget, particularly since the rise of the company’s current president, P. Anthony Ridder. Before that, Roberts was stung that he was not named publisher. Instead, the paper installed Robert Hall, a Knight-Ridder official from Detroit. On Tuesday, Ridder praised Roberts for creating “unquestionably one of the great newspapers in America.”
Roberts started in journalism as a farm reporter for the Goldsboro (N.C.) News-Argus. He also worked at the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, the News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C., and the Detroit Free Press before he joined the New York Times. Roberts covered the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the Vietnam War for the newspaper, later becoming its national editor.
The tributes to Roberts were swift in coming. Bill Kovach, curator at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard and a former colleague at the New York Times, said Roberts is “one of the last of that generation for whom the separation of business and the editorial department was a complete and absolute principle. . . . I really do believe it was a person like Gene Roberts that Jefferson and Madison and (George) Mason had in mind when they crafted the First Amendment for the press in a self-governing society.”
“He has cast a hell of a shadow on journalism in his day,” said Benjamin C. Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington Post and now one of the last of his generation’s prominent editors. “It can’t be that newspapers are better off without him.”
The news provoked tears among some of Roberts’ staff and open anger among others, plus a lengthy standing ovation in the Inquirer newsroom. Before that, in a meeting with top editors, Roberts said he would never run another newspaper. Then, fighting tears, he was unable to continue and walked out.
