Friday, April 13, 2007

Russ Newton Promoted to Senior V.P.

Folks,

We are announcing today that Russ Newton, vice president/production, is being promoted to senior vice president/operations, succeeding Mark Kurtich. We have been fortunate to have, in Mark and Russ, two of our industry’s ablest and most experienced operations leaders. Together with our other colleagues, they have led The Times to ever greater production quality and value for our readers and advertisers, while continuously improving the productivity and efficiency of our operations.

In that spirit, and given the continuing economic pressure we face in a changing industry, we have concluded that we should run the operations department with a single vice president. We face these difficult decisions in all parts of our company, and at all levels of employees and managers.

It is particularly difficult to say goodbye to Mark Kurtich, a distinguished newspaper executive with an impressive track record in the industry — a decade at The Times and 26 years at the Hartford Courant. In his career here, Mark has led some of the most significant initiatives we have ever had in operations, including the start-up of CCN, the consolidation of our printing in the Olympic and Orange County plants, and the advent of sub-zip code zoning — all the while raising the bar in terms of quality, efficiency and customer satisfaction. You could have no better colleague or friend than Mark.

Russ Newton is an excellent leader, a clear thinker, a straight talker and more than ready to take the reigns. With a newspaper career dating back to 1978, Russ joined the Chicago Tribune in the mid-80s. Ultimately, he headed West in 2000 and joined The Times as director of operations and president of California Community News. Over the subsequent years, Russ has led our production operations through challenging times, and has been deeply involved with Mark in all of our longer-term strategy and planning work. He will do a terrific job leading change as we find innovative ways to produce and deliver the news to Southern Cal.

Please join me in congratulating Russ on his promotion, and in thanking Mark for his extraordinary service.

David

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Russ what's your first move have us like ccn for half price give them your soul russ we know you what to move up at any cost, to a press person your not a straight shooter the BIBLE is right its getting worse and darker the anti christ has risen.

Anonymous said...

They forgot the bit about Mark wanting to spend more time with his family!

Anonymous said...

Why did they kick Mark to the curb?? I figured Russ would have gotten himself fired by now.

MR.OC

Anonymous said...

From one who was close to the inner workings of the regime that Mark presided over, in my opinion it was one of corruption and lies. I personally warned Mark that those he surrounded himself with and took advice from would cause a union vote and be a liability to him. He didn't listen and guess what - The union is in and Mark is out. I hope Russ has enough sense to oust the rot and surround himself with commendable souls. He needs to look at his directors and those in HR and perform a de-louseing. Otherwise he fill face the same fate as Mark. Eddo

Anonymous said...

when do they start sending the rest of Chicago here?

Anonymous said...

What happened to Mr Wonderful.I thought he was to Wonderful to get rid of

Anonymous said...

DON'T WORRY RUSS WILL FIND A WAY TO GET HIMSELF AXED

Anonymous said...

I guess that's what happens when you are full of missinformation. Now we wait and see what happens to the rest of the clan.

Anonymous said...

corruption and lies "anonymous " !!??? please tell me you did not " just find that out "