New Editor at the Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune has a new editor. Bruce Dold will succeed the retiring Gerould Kern, 66, who’s been at the helm of the Chicago Tribune since 2008.

Dold, 60, the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor, has worked at the Tribune for four decades. He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1994, four years after his appointment to the editorial board. He became editorial page editor in 2000.

A Tribune spokesman said the succession plan has been in the works for more than a year.

“I am forever grateful, and I will always be proud to say I was a part of the Chicago Tribune’s story,” Kern said in a statement released by Tribune Publishing Wednesday.

Kern, a resident of northwest suburban Long Grove, was editor during the Tribune’s four-year stay in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, from 2008 to 2012, more than half of his time at the helm of the paper.

Kern became editor during the Sam Zell-and-Randy Michaels era of Tribune leadership, which marked years of dismay and disbelief among Tribune staff. The worst of times was chronicled in a New York Times story titled “At Flagging Tribune, Tales of a Bankrupt Culture.” Regarded as a decent, serious man, Kern was not part of the executive suite lewd frat-boy culture encouraged by CEO Michaels and his chief innovation officer, Lee Abrams. 

When their reign ended in 2010, Kern survived.

A Chicago Tribune story about the announcement notes that Kern presided over the Tribune’s integration of 38 suburban Chicago dailies and weeklies, acquired from Ferro and the Sun-Times in 2014 for $20 million. Kern oversaw a redesign of the newspaper and redesign of ChicagoTribune.com, and recent staff buyouts.

He also directed the expansion of the printed edition in 2011, adding 44 full pages of news coverage to the Tribune each week, according to a company announcement.

Kern arrived at the Tribune in 1991 after serving as executive editor of the Daily Herald.

“Since the day I started my career I have worked nearly 45 years without a real break,” Kern told Crain’s Chicago Business. “I’m looking forward to pausing and catching my breath.”

Crain’s Chicago Business pointedly took note of the uncertainty surrounding Ferro’s involvement in the Chicago Tribune, given recent history at the Chicago Sun-Times:

Ferro has come in for some criticism, as one of a group of Wrapports owners at the Sun-Times, because of allegations that he may have tried to influence editorial content of the paper, contrary to journalistic standards. A political reporter who exited in 2014 cited a struggle over editorial authority at the paper, though Editor-in-Chief Jim Kirk rejected that suggestion.

When Dold was asked during an interview today how he would respond to any attempt by the business side of the company to influence the paper’s content, he declined to comment.

Dold earned the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 1994 for a series on the death of a three-year-old boy and the failure of the juvenile court and child welfare system to save the child. His writing contributed to sweeping reforms in the protection and care of abused children in Illinois.

He was honored with the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Chicago Journalists Association and the 2015 Dante Award from the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans. He received the 2009 Sigma Delta Chi Award for editorial writing from the Society of Professional Journalists and the 1999 National Journalism Award for Commentary from the Scripps Howard Foundation. Dold is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and the American Society of News Editors. He served on the board of the Illinois First Amendment Center.