Publisher’s Pick   

Greg Moore, managing editor of the Boston Globe, becomes editor of the Denver Post, replacing Glenn Guzzo.

After an eight-month courtship, Denver Post Publisher William Dean Singleton hires Boston Globe Managing Editor Greg Moore to replace Editor Glenn Guzzo.

"I wanted my own editor," says Singleton, who inherited Guzzo when he named himself publisher last year after the Post entered a joint operating agreement with the Denver Rocky Mountain News. (Singleton's MediaNews Group owns the Post.) "Glenn is a very good editor and a good person and a friend. What attracted me to Greg was that he was managing editor of what I consider to be one of the best regional papers in the country"--a category Singleton says he wants the Post to join.

Guzzo, 51, who spent six years as managing editor of the Akron Beacon Journal before former Post Publisher Gerald E. Grilly hired him in 1999, describes his departure as "really a mutual understanding about separation. There's really no animosity or controversy."

Moore, 47, says Singleton called him "out of the blue" last August. "He wasn't in a hurry. He wanted to gauge my interest." After Moore sent him a detailed critique last winter, Singleton took him to dinner and the talk started getting serious. On May 2, two-and-a-half weeks after telling Guzzo, Singleton announced the change to the staff, though he didn't reveal Moore's name until after it leaked the next day. The publisher said he and Guzzo "didn't share the same vision and the same pace for how to build the Post in the future," according to a May 3 Post story.

"We have had a pretty incredible amount of turnover in the top job," says Post reporter Mark Obmascik. "I've been here since 1985, and we've had nine editors.... Dean made a big point that he personally had hired Greg Moore and that he had spent a year looking for the right person. There's a lot of hope here that that means that Greg Moore is going to last here."

Managing editor of the Globe since July 1994, Moore had been at the paper 15 years when he was passed over a year ago for the editor's job, which went to Martin Baron. A native of Cleveland, Moore joined the Globe in 1986 after six years at the Plain Dealer, four in editing positions.

As one of the top three editors when Matthew V. Storin led the Globe, "Greg was considered to be the most approachable. He was very good at working the newsroom; he was very popular with the troops," says Dan Kennedy, media critic for the Boston Phoenix. Plus, "he was seen as having his finger on the pulse of the local coverage.... Boston loses but Denver gains."

"I like Dean," Moore says. "I think he's really committed to doing what it takes" to build a strong regional paper--meaning he's willing to spend money on hiring more people, ramping up local coverage, making the paper "pop more from a design standpoint, to look different from day to day."

Moore's goal for some time has been to become the editor of a major newspaper, he says. "And now I am, and I'm really happy."