AJR  The Beat
From AJR,   December 1992

A Long-Awaited Return to Maine   

By Chip Rowe
Chip Rowe, a former AJR associate editor, is an editor at Playboy.     


Three decades after landing his first newspaper job at the Bangor Daily News, Robert Kelleter leaves the Washington Post to become the Maine newspaper's executive editor. He succeeds V. Paul Reynolds , who departs after 23 years following management fights with Publisher Richard Warren .

Kelleter, 52, was still a student at the University of Maine when he was hired by the Daily News as a sportswriter in 1962. He joined the Milwaukee Sentinel five years later, then jumped to the Post in 1969.

"I went to see whether I could make it in the big time," he says. "But I went to school here, my wife is from here, we have a summer place about an hour from here. This is a chance to come back sooner than someday."

Kelleter began as a sports copy editor at the Post but soon rose to assistant sports editor. He was named news editor and graphics director over five features sections in the early 1970s and later was among a team that designed and tested a newsroom computer system that eliminated the typewriters made famous by "All the President's Men." Most recently he was editor of the weekly food section.
"This is nothing against the Post, but everybody that's been there a while is in the same boat," he says. "Their Maine might be Arizona or Minnesota, who knows. Only after people said, 'This is great for you,' did I realize how few people get to do exactly what they want to do exactly where they want to do it."

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