Gone Fishin'   

Chris Peck resigns after 19 years as editor of Spokane, Washington's Spokesman-Review.

After pondering the idea for a year, Chris Peck ends a 19-year run as editor of Spokane, Washington's Spokesman-Review by resigning. Peck, 51, who recently finished a one-year term as president of the Associated Press Managing Editors, plans to do some steelhead trout fishing--while thinking about how he could best help journalism convert what he sees as its defensive, closed culture into one "much more connected to the communities we serve." He says it was "probably not coincidental" that he gave notice of his departure as 14 news staffers were taking voluntary and forced buyouts. The newsroom lost 11 people to buyouts in July. "We've had kind of a rough six months," Peck says. While he admits the pre-July staff of 165 was large for a 106,000-circulation paper, he says, "we were able to take on some projects and think in a way that was expansive."