Bylines   

Shaking Up CBS
After the network lags far behind its competitors during the early hours of the Princess Diana story, CBS News President Andrew Heyward shakes up his hard news operation. London Bureau Chief Marcy McGinnis is promoted to the news division's number three position, vice president, news coverage, succeeding Lane Venardos , the point man the night of the princess' accident. Venardos, a 28-year CBS vet who spearheaded the network's coverage of Tiananmen Square and the Persian Gulf War, becomes executive producer and director, special events. The network, short-staffed on Labor Day weekend, blinked as millions tuned in to other networks' blanket coverage of The Accident in Paris. Within a few weeks of Diana's death, Heyward created a "bulletin center" so the network wouldn't again be slow off the mark on breaking news. But apparently that wasn't enough. McGinnis, who climbed the network's rungs beginning in 1970 as an administrative assistant, will reign over worldwide newsgathering. "I bring to the job a tremendous amount of energy," says McGinnis, 47, who takes just two weeks to pack up her London home and move into her new 57th Street office. "I want to translate that into a renewal of hard news, a real grab at hard news." McGinnis says she'll spend her first couple of months on the job evaluating how things are; then she'll decide how they should be. "I want people who work there to feel they're on top of the world, whether that means in ratings or not. I want them to know when they've covered a story they've done it better than anybody else," she says. "Eventually the viewers will catch on."

A Pioneer on the Web
San Francisco's oldest working journalist, Thomas C. Fleming , 89, who in 1944 cofounded the city's African American weekly, the Sun-Reporter , hits cyberspace. His columns, which appear in the Sun-Reporter, recall the low-tech past. Now Max Millard , a colleague from the paper, posts weekly memoir installments on the Net for Fleming, who's never cybersurfed. "Maybe I'll try it," says Fleming. "But I write on a typewriter. I haven't bothered with computers. I came along too early for that."

King Abdicates
After a quarter century at the Philadelphia Inquirer , Editor Maxwell E. P. King , 53, announces he will leave his post at the beginning of next year. "It is better to make such a change in leadership when things are going so well," he told staffers. King will take a 10-month leave to travel and rest and read at his goat farm, and then will rejoin the Philly paper and write op-eds as associate editor. Publisher and Chairman Robert J. Hall says he expects to find a successor in the next few months. "We're going to talk to people at the newspaper, within Knight-Ridder and outside the newspapers," says Hall. "We're going to see who volunteers or raises their hand; we're not going to do an executive search." King, editor since 1990, had the unenviable task of succeeding Gene Roberts , under whose leadership the revitalized Inky won 17 Pulitzers in 18 years. The King-era Inquirer had many Pulitzer finalists and finally won one of the coveted prizes this year. (See "The Inquirer's Midlife Crisis," January/February 1995, and Free Press, May.) "Through one of the most difficult periods for American newspapers during this century," King told staffers, he and Deputy Editor Gene Foreman – who's slated to retire to a teaching slot at Penn State next August – worked closely to fill Roberts' giant shoes. "As Gene prepares to leave, it seems to me a good time to let the next wave of leadership move up at the Inquirer." Hall lauds King: "He made the paper into a better paper than it was when he took over." Jim Naughton , president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and a top Roberts lieutenant in Philly, says news execs should note King's plan to return as a writer. Says Naughton, "It's one more indication, if we needed it, that the job of executive editor in American newspapers today is very draining on the executive side and not a lot of fun on the editor's side."

National Journal's Hat Trick
Washington's public policy weekly not only scores big with a sporty redesign, it snags two powerhouse senior writers: ousted New Republic Editor Michael Kelly (see Bylines, October) and legal affairs guru Stuart S. Taylor Jr. American Lawyer Media Inc., Taylor's former full time employer, will reprint his new National Journal column on all things legal – and some things nonlegal – in its publications Legal Times and The American Lawyer (where Taylor's groundbreaking article that lent greater credibility to Paula Jones ' case against President Clinton appeared). Taylor also joins Newsweek as a contributing editor. Kelly, fired by New Republic owner Martin Peretz in September following a series of clashes, will write an exclusive weekly insiders' roundup on politics. Kelly will also write a weekly syndicated column for Washington Post Editorial Page Editor Meg Greenfield . "She proposed that the entire column be about Martin Peretz – a Peretz Watch," Kelly quips. "But I said no."

An Alternative Bureau
As other news outlets trim their Washington presence, Alternative Media Inc., owner of Detroit's 110,000-circulation alternative Metro Times and the 42,000-circ Orlando Weekly , creates a D.C. bureau. Monte Paulsen , 34, leaves Knight-Ridder's the State in Columbia, South Carolina, to join AMI as national editor. As a reporter, Paulsen says he has found that local stories are often linked to D.C. "So many stories, in South Carolina, Maine, Michigan or Orlando wound up being about deals that were cut between special interests and lawmakers," he says. "We're hoping to work the equation the other way around and report on abuses of power a little earlier in the cycle by paying attention to lobbying and money and politics."

Knight Shift
Two decades after leaving his editorship at Greenville, Mississippi's Delta Democrat Times for the nation's capital, award-winning journalist and author Hodding Carter III heads south to succeed retiring Knight Foundation President and Chief Executive Officer Creed C. Black . Carter, 62, a former State Department spokesman who has held the Knight chair at the University of Maryland College of Journalism since 1995, plans to finish out his career at the $1.2 billion foundation's Miami headquarters. "My plans are to learn as much as possible about what it's already doing," Carter says, "while operating on the idea that if it's not broke, don't fix it." As for leaving the Beltway, Carter only sees the positives: less traffic and more sunshine.

Around and About

The ax falls at the D.C. offices of Otta-way News Service , which provides regional coverage for Ottaway's 19 daily papers. Four of 10 positions are cut, effective January 1: a wire editor's slot will be left vacant, and reporters Polly Elliott and Robb Frederick and Deputy Bureau Chief Winston Wood are given three months' notice... New York Times Washington correspondent Karen DeWitt returns to broadcast as senior editor of ABC 's "Nightline." The last time DeWitt did TV work was in 1983, when she hosted a cooking show called "Karen's Kitchen.".. Minnesota's Duluth News-Tribune Executive Editor Vicki Gowler jumps to the managing editor's slot at the St. Paul Pioneer Press ... After 48 years, Charles S. Rowe , editor and copublisher of the Free Lance-Star of Fredericksburg, Virginia, retires. Rowe, 72, and his brother Josiah P. Rowe III , 69, inherited the family-owned paper from their father. "I expect it will remain in the family," says Rowe, who plans to write his memoirs for his three children and five grandchildren, as his brother continues to run the paper.