Talk about continuing the youth movement at The Kansas City Star.
Wow.
The woman who will become the new publisher later this month is 40.
She succeeds Mark Zieman, who was 47 when he was named publisher three years ago.
And…Mike Fannin, the editor, is only 44.
Parrish
The new publisher of the McClatchy-owned paper is Mi-Ai, Parrish, who has been publisher of the company-owned Idaho Statesman since July 2006.
Parrish, whose first name is pronounced MEE-uh, had been deputy managing editor for features and visuals at the Minneapolis Star Tribune before being tapped for the Idaho post.
I sure hope that Parrish works out, and I wish her the very best. But putting a 40-year-old person with five years of publishing experience — especially small-market experience — looks like a rather big roll of the dice to me.
On the plus side, reporter Mark Davis reports in a story on The Star’s website that Parrish led the Statesman’s effort to “transform and diversify business operations, introduce new print and digital products, grow digital traffic and revenue while improving the core newspaper and enhancing its reputation for quality journalism.”
This year, for example, the Statesman rolled out a new product called Business Insider, a weekly business-to-business magazine. And in 2008, the Statesman was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the breaking news category for its coverage of events triggered by the men’s room arrest of former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig in Minneapolis.
But look at some statistics.
The Star has an average Monday-Friday circulation of 210,000 and a Sunday circulation of about 300,000. By comparison, the Statesman, in Boise, has an average weekday circulation of about 50,000 and Sunday circulation of about 73,000. (Sunday circulation has been up slightly the last two years, while daily circulation has declined each of the last four years.)
So, The Star is about four times larger than the Statesman. That’s quite a jump.
Parrish also will be tested right off the bat with her choices for top managers. Among other things, she’ll have to decide whether to keep vice presidents such as Editor Mike Fannin and advertising executive Tim Doty in place.
On the digital side, her youth should work to her advantage because that appears to be where the future lies for newspapers. But her youth could work against her on the personnel side, unless she gets some very good advisers.
On that front, my recommendation would be that, in the newsroom, she turn to long-time managing editor Steve Shirk, a tried and true leader at The Star for more than 35 years.
Steve’s an old guy — about 60. He’s got the wisdom and the temperament to help a new publisher make a safe jump from a small pond into the churning waters of the Lake of the Ozarks.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Interesting background as she’s hardly breaking new ground aka Kay Graham, Tina Brown, Jill Abramson, etc. Well maybe for good ‘ol KC. Truly wish her well as the future usually looks different and discomforting. Ah, but can she succeed at driving the entertainment bus that’s the real question. Newspaper Publisher is hardly an issue as “the news” continues shrink in value and presentation quality. Besides it’s likely she’ll end up being replaced by some 18 year old texting champion who just loved editing investigative reporting videos on the HS paper…they got prizes too. Is it too late for a good ‘ol Viking burial? Plenty of combustible material. Jayson Seymour
Ah, the JFK verses Trickie Dick, experience counts argument. [Well Kennedy would have also been impeached / forced to resign by his second term.] His first 1000 days were a night mare. His personal misconduct worthy of Harding.
I don’t know if Parrish is the right choice or not — I don’t know her.
But I do know the newspaper industry, having worked the news side, the consulting side and now, in my salt-and-pepper years, the owner side. And if there’s one thing we *don’t* need, it’s more graybeard industry veterans in the corner office.
The monopoly or near-monopoly that most dailies historically had on local information meant innovation didn’t really need to be part of the corporate DNA; I defy you to name any other industry that faced such a wholesale challenge to its core business model and was as slow/halting to act.
Parrish is at least young enough to have spent most of her working years watching the decline happen — maybe that gives her a sense of urgency that so many publishers seem to lack.
Excellent point, Greg…I’m sure Gary Pruitt, McClatchy c.e.o, was thinking along the same lines. The only direction, I hope, is up.
My guess it will be a mix; keep one of the seasoned vets, likely someone who’s planning on leaving in a few years anyway, and then bring in a whole new younger team beholden only to Mi-Ai.
This does a couple of things – it allows her to avoid mistakes (ala a Shirk-type counselor) as well as ignore that same advice, when she feels it is warranted, without causing too much pandemonium.
I would also look for the last of the older vets to be gone within this physical year – Mi-Ai will want to rebuild the paper’s new (USA Today-lite) face/brand without contending with the natural resentment of the “b’god, this is not how it’s done!” crowd.
Of course…what do I know?
I think you know a lot…Very plausible and reasonable theories.
Perhaps the good folks at McClatchy got tired of seeing the upside down pyramid at The Star grow larger with each passing layoff, with all the worker bees getting the axe while the duds remained.
The good news is that they did not hire from within. One shudders to think of what would happen if an affirmative action baby like Miriam Pepper were given the slot, or Fannin.
The real test will be at the next layoff. Will she continue to keep the duds in editorial like Diuguid, Shelly, Pepper, etc, or can them and keep the working journalists? Will she end the charade and give Derek Donovan the boot. And there are way too many chiefs, and not enough working Indians. If nothing else, it will be an interesting time to be an observer. Our prayers go out to all you guys who actually write real news stories to keep us informed.
I think Jim Hale was only 50 when he came here from the Ft. Worth Star Telegram.
The one problem I can see with getting rid of too many of the old timers is that you lose your institutional memory. The loss of information that occurs when a Jim Sullinger retires has got to hurt.
Certainly she can’t do any worse than the Brisbane/Zeiman model and who knows, maybe we get lucky and I can finally have a newspaper in my driveway again.
I still imitate Jim Hale in my mind every time I see a guy in cowboy hat. What a twang! Good guy though.
Mike — To my surprise, you’re exactly right. I would have guessed he was at least 60 when he came here, but, of course, I was only 31 at the time and looking at him through relatively young eyes…I checked back, and he came here in about 1977, when he would have been 49 or 50.
Chuck — Oddly, I don’t think Jim Hale ever wore a cowboy hat or boots (correct me if I’m wrong, Mike), but he sure was Texan in every other way.
No, I never saw him in cowboy duds, but his accent was WAY Texas.
Its been 25 years.
He had such a twang to me, and the incongruity of his Truman Capote look in combination with that accent, to me was a hoot.
No diss, loved the guy, but he was a character