AJR  The Beat
From AJR,   January/February 2003

The Old Switcheroo   

Gannett editors Tom Callinan and Ward Bushee trade jobs, with Callinan going to the Cincinnati Enquirer and Bushee moving to the Arizona Republic.

By Kathryn S. Wenner
Kathryn S. Wenner, a former AJR associate editor, is a copy editor at the Washington Post.     


The editors of Gannett's Arizona Republic and Cincinnati Enquirer switch jobs--Tom Callinan moves to Ohio and Ward Bushee to Phoenix. "Ward is a West Coast guy, and I'm a Midwest guy," says Callinan, 54, a Minnesota native. "I think his goal was always to get back to the West. I'm definitely more comfortable in a Mid-western city or Eastern city than in the desert. The people at Gannett knew all that." Bushee, 53, agrees. The California native arrived in Cincinnati four years ago, following an investigative reporting debacle that demoralized the newsroom (see "The Chiquita Aftermath," May 1999). Two years after he arrived, the city was torn apart by race riots, "a huge issue for the city to grapple with, and an opportunity for us in the newsroom to give some editorial leadership through a difficult time," Bushee says. Callinan, who led the Republic's newsroom through a change in ownership from Central Newspapers and the formation of a partnership with Gannett's Phoenix TV station, KPNX, says he wants to incorporate more racial and cultural diversity into the Enquirer's coverage.

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