Full Speed Ahead   

Vicki S. Gowler becomes editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press after four years as managing editor, following Walker Lundy's departure for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Vicki S. Gowler achieves her goal sooner than she expected, becoming editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press after four years as managing editor. Gowler, 50, landed the top spot two weeks after the announcement that Editor Walker Lundy was off to head the newsroom at the Philadelphia Inquirer (see "Identity Crisis," page 20). Previously, Gowler was executive editor of the Duluth News Tribune for four years. (All three papers belong to Knight Ridder.) Daily journalism captured Gowler's heart in her first job out of college as a reporter for the Iroquois County Daily Times in Watseka, Illinois, her home state. In her first editing job, at Knight Ridder's Miami Herald, she discovered that "I can be involved in so much more." She plans to stay the course she and Lundy charted, competing with Minneapolis' Star Tribune by offering what she describes as a spirited mix of "hell-raising" investigative journalism and "surprising" enterprise reporting on topics sparked by "good ongoing conversations with people in [the] community."