Time to Think   

Former San Jose Mercury News Publisher Jay T. Harris is named a distinguished fellow at the Poynter Institute, where he will develop a program for senior media executives.

The Poynter Institute names Jay T. Harris a distinguished fellow after he suggests it offer a program for senior media executives--which he's now developing, along with Poynter faculty. Harris, 53, stunned the newspaper industry last year when he resigned as publisher of the San Jose Mercury News in a dispute with owner Knight Ridder over how to balance profit demands with the cost of doing good journalism. His goal at Poynter is to give top-level people an opportunity "to work through and think deeply about the decisions confronting them," Harris says. "At one time, the nature of these jobs was they actually allowed for, indeed called for, reflection. But the change in the nature of the business means that they have been on something of a fast-moving treadmill, with scores of e-mails and calls and individual decisions to be made every day. And that develops a skill at being sort of an intellectual quick-draw artist, if you will, but it does not really develop the sort of reflective, value-based instincts that are the appropriate tools of the stewards of the public trust."