Herald editor will head back to N.Y.

Ken Chandler , a veteran tabloid editor who tried to prop up the struggling Boston Herald with a blend of celebrity items, breaking news, gossip, sports, and a dash of sex, is leaving the paper at the end of next month.

Chandler said he is leaving the paper's top editorial job after two years to try to become a media consultant to the very Fortune 500 corporations he once skewered with relish. Chandler will return to New York, where he previously was editor in chief and publisher of the New York Post.

Herald publisher Pat Purcell disclosed Chandler's departure in the paper's newsroom yesterday and said he will fill the post with longtime Herald editor and suburban newspaper executive Kevin Convey , 51, the Herald's current managing editor.

Convey will face an immense challenge. Not only is the newspaper industry going through rough financial times and staff cuts, but the Herald is the second-place paper behind The Boston Globe in a city where both papers are experiencing steeper circulation and advertising declines than in many other parts of the country.

"It's never easy being the editor of the second newspaper in the city. Right now you might call the job mission impossible," said Lou Ureneck , chairman of Boston University's journalism department.

"If we can presume the current editor's approach wasn't working to grow circulation with the classic tabloid approach, one wonders what will work," Ureneck said. "The Herald has to find a way to zig against the Globe's zag, and it's going to be very difficult."

The Herald's average daily circulation fell 12 percent to 203,000 in the six months that ended Sept. 30 compared with a year earlier. The Globe's circulation dropped 7 percent to 386,000. Nationally, the average circulation decline was 2.8 percent, according to an analysis by the Newspaper Association of America.

Convey, who joined the Herald as a business writer in 1981, said in an interview yesterday that he intends to maintain Chandler's focus on tabloid journalism. He said he recognizes the challenges of the job but would keep newsroom staffers focused on their jobs, "rather than the zeitgeist" of the newspaper industry.

"I haven't seen the bottom fall out of anything as rapidly as it has fallen out of the newspaper business. It's very difficult for people to adjust and find their footing when you don't know where the bottom is," he said.

The leadership changes came on the eve of a vote today to accept a wage freeze by 117 Boston Herald employees who are members of the Newspaper Guild of Greater Boston . The employees rejected a contract on Nov. 7 and are taking a second vote today. About 90 newsroom employees in the same union already accepted the wage freeze in a separate vote on Nov. 7.

"There are a lot of intricate issues right now concerning the future of the Boston Herald," said Brian Whalen , president of the union. "All of us here, Ken Chandler and Kevin Convey included, are doing everything we can to keep our newspaper viable."

Chandler, 59, will continue to advise the Herald on business and Internet strategies. He said he plans to set up a new New York company, Chandler Media, to advise big corporations how to handle their public image in time of crisis. He said he has three clients lined up but declined to identify them.

Chandler said he does not expect to have trouble enlisting clients, despite his bomb-throwing style, exemplified by a Herald photo illustration that depicted former Gillette chief executive James M. Kilts holding money bags after his 2005 deal to sell the Boston company to Procter & Gamble for $53 billion. Kilts, who is a member of the board of directors of The New York Times Co., which owns the Globe, also faced criticism in columns in the Globe.

"I would dispute the fact that I've whacked corporations or businesses," Chandler said. He added that the businesses he is approaching are in New York, not in the Herald's crosshairs.

The change is another in a series of upheavals at the Herald. In addition to staff cutbacks, Purcell sold his suburban newspaper holdings this year, Community Newspaper Co.

Chandler spent 30 years as a top editorial executive at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. in New York and Boston, including a previous stint as Herald editor from 1986 to 1992. He returned to the Herald in 2003 as a consulting editor and was appointed editorial director in 2004.

Convey has held a number of jobs with Herald publications since he was hired 25 years ago. In February 2001, Purcell appointed him editor in chief of the suburban newspaper chain that was sold this year. Convey returned to the Herald as managing editor in July 2004.

Christopher Rowland can be reached at crowland@globe.com.