An Editor Joins Us In Stormy Times   

From cops to Congress, Miami to Milwaukee, Rieder has prepared for it.

Here we are at Vol. 14, No. 1, of WJR, and it is the last issue bearing the illustrious name of Bill Monroe as editor. When you read this, Rem Rieder already will be separating the wheat from the chaff as Bill's successor (and printing mostly the wheat, I hasten to add). His name will appear on the masthead in the next issue.

Looking over his record for the past 26 years, one might say: He's done it all. But not exactly. His new challenge is different from all the rest. He is exceptionally well prepared.

He comes aboard in one of the stormiest seas that ever buffeted American journalism. You know the story: a recession that is even worse for print and broadcast journalism than for most of the country, a time of layoffs, newspaper consolidations, death for some magazines, trauma in broadcast news. It is a convulsive time. Just about everybody is nervous.

Rem most recently has directed a staff of 60 as executive editor of States News Service, whose primary product is locally-angled Washington news for about 150 newspapers.

More of his résumé: assistant managing editor for news, Milwaukee Journal; deputy metropolitan editor, Washington Post; city editor and national editor, Miami Herald; managing editor, Trenton Times; Washington correspondent and deputy metropolitan editor, Philadelphia Bulletin; reporter, Philadelphia Inquirer (right out of Harvard). He has covered mayors, bus drivers, cops and Congress.

His mandate is clear. "In print and broadcast news, editors and reporters are carefully reviewing what they are doing," he said on the day he was appointed. "WJR will examine everything from the philosophical and ethical questions to the business of print and broadcast news."

Bill Monroe becomes a contributing editor. We will expect him to contribute.

Bill declined our suggestion that he ruminate about a truly distinguished half-century of journalism (NBC's Washington bureau chief, panjandrum of "Meet the Press," associate editor of the daily New Orleans Item and now almost five years as WJR's editor). He obliged only by hitting this subject a light lick in his last regular column, on page 6.

A friend told me as we were discussing the WJR editorship: "You know, nobody in our field would consider that job a step down." I can't think of a better tribute to Bill.

Our masthead next month also will glisten with the name of Eugene L. Roberts as a senior editor. While he was executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer it won 17 Pulitzer Prizes. He now crafts journalism's future as a full-time professor at Maryland. For WJR, he is assigned to Amazing Insights and Inspirations. Honest disclosure: He is a consultant for Knight-Ridder.

Now to answer your question: Rem's parents named him Jeremy. (Call Rem. Write Rem.) l