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Hands-on editor
for Mort's Daily News
Zuckerman steals away top
pencil from Sun-Times
By Brad Webber
In the newspaper business, the
higher one rises as an editor, the less one tends to write. But
there are exceptions, and one is Michael Cooke. As editor of the
Chicago Sun-Times, Cooke has been known to personally write the
paper's gossip column. That's called being hands-on.
And hands-on may be what Mort Zuckerman most needs in his
battle to stave off the circulation advances of the New York Post
against his Daily News.
After a swirl of rumors over recent days, News owner
Zuckerman yesterday confirmed that he's hired away Cooke to serve as
the News's top newsroom editor. It would seem on the face of it a
good fit, since the Sun-Times in many ways mirrors the Daily News'
working-class style.
Cooke fills a post vacant since October 2003's ouster
of Edward Kosner, the former New York magazine editor. His exit signaled a turning point of sorts for the paper, one more toward
combating the Post directly, often with stories and headlines that
would not have appeared under Kosner, who was inclined to dismiss
the Post as beneath consideration as a competitor.
Cooke, 51, who has declined to discuss his plans
for the Daily News, will start work there in February.
In Chicago, he is credited with buttressing the Sun-Times'
journalism quality, which has been uneven in recent years, by
supporting the paper's high-profile series about corruption in city
officials' rental of private trucks. It was a strong dose of
investigative journalism at a paper viewed by many as subservient to
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Yet the paper remains a faint shadow
of the punchy Sun-Times of yore.
"I hope that is my legacy in Chicago," Cooke
tells today's New York Times, referring to his ability to balance
tough stories with the whimsy that's so much a part of tabloid
journalism. "It is possible, when running a tabloid, to gasp at
the magnificence of Madonna's navel and also do extraordinary work
that changes administrations."
Zuckerman said in a statement that Cooke's "skill
and enthusiasm are well known throughout our industry" and that
he "will bring even more tabloid experience to our highly
skilled staff."
Cooke, who succeeded Nigel Wade as Sun-Times editor in
May 2000, was a former editor of The Province in Vancouver, B.C.
and also worked at Edmonton Journal. In 1998 he was the founding
editor of the National Post, Canada's national newspaper, after
serving as editor in chief of the Financial Post, which was folded
into the National Post.
He was also a former managing editor of the
Montreal Gazette. He began his career at a weekly newspaper in
England before moving to Canada to work on the copy desk at the
Toronto Star in 1974.
Cooke's easygoing style and joie de vivre was
evident in Chicago, where in his outgoing memo he suggests a round
of drinks with his old crew before he leaves. It was a dose of humor
the paper could well use following last year's circulation scandal
and charges that ousted Hollinger CEO Conrad Black and top deputy David
Radler used the company as a piggy bank.
As in Chicago, where editorial staffers had come close
to striking over the past two years, Cooke will inherit another
group in payroll dissent. The Daily News's 370 editorial employees
have been offered voluntary buyouts to pare expenses.
Industry insiders will also watch how Cooke's
personality meshes with Martin Dunn, a fellow Englishman and the
Daily News' deputy publisher and editorial director since 2003. Dunn
was a former deputy editor of London's racy Sun and former editor of
the Boston Herald under Rupert Murdoch.
The two will need to work magic to keep at bay the
Post's circulation gains. The Daily News still has the larger
circulation, at 715,000 on weekdays versus 686,000 for the Post. But
the Post has been gaining steadily over recent years, significantly
narrowing the gap.
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Jan.
7, 2005
©
2005
Media Life
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Brad Webber is a Detroit writer and a longtime Chicago newspaperman.
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