New owners shake up staff of Eagle-Tribune
Less than a month after completing its purchase of the Eagle-
Rogers, the company's third-generation publisher, whose family sold the chain last month, was replaced by Richard Franks, who had been chief executive officer. In a move announced Oct. 12, Franks, hired by Rogers about five years ago, was promoted to president and publisher.
The North Andover-based company's vice president of news, William Ketter, will no longer oversee the day-to-day editorial content. That role goes to executive editor Karen Andreas, 39, who worked at North Shore newspapers for 17 years, including three as Salem News editor.
Rogers, who has carried on a family tradition of community service as publisher, will function in a loosely defined public relations consulting role, according to Mike Reed, president and chief executive officer of Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., the company that completed its purchase of Eagle-Tribune Publishing on Sept. 30.
Reed said Rogers's new role wouldn't be much different from his role as publisher at the Eagle-Tribune, where Franks ran the day-to-day operations.
''Chip is in the office," said Reed. ''He's coming in every day. He's still doing a lot of public relations. He's consulting for CNHI. . . . He's going to be helpful as we tackle readership and editorial projects. He's going to be helpful with acquisition. . . . I can't tell you what he's going to do tomorrow, but he's going to continue to be involved at the Eagle-Tribune."
Rogers could not be reached for comment, and his wife, Holly Rogers, referred all questions to Reed.
According to Daniel J. Griffin, the Eagle-Tribune's vice president of marketing, the newspaper is targeted to suburban families with children. In telephone interviews, Griffin and Reed expressed interest in revamping the newspaper content to not only retain dwindling readership -- a problem for newspapers nationwide -- but attract new readers.
Griffin said Andreas, a married Danvers resident with two young sons, has her finger on the pulse of the region. Her editorial skills and a series of press awards earned by the Salem Evening News during her tenure brought her to the Eagle-Tribune this year as second-in-command to Ketter, Griffin said.
Ketter, 65, under whose guardianship the Eagle-Tribune won one of its two Pulitzer Prizes, will be used as an ''educator and trainer" for editorial personnel throughout the company, said Reed. The Pulitzer is regarded as the highest honor in print journalism. The Eagle-Tribune won in 1988 and 2003.
''We think extremely highly of him," Reed said of Ketter. ''He will be the best editorial person at the company. Why not expose him editorially to the whole company?"
Reed said the company holds regular training sessions for employees of its 91 daily newspapers covering 22 states, with a combined circulation of more than 1 million. The Tribune is its largest holding and the only Pulitzer Prize-winning publication under the umbrella.
The training sessions take place in five regions, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Dallas, and Birmingham. Reed was uncertain whether Ketter would travel or focus on New England personnel.
''He can go into a newsroom and see how they conduct newsroom proceedings," said Reed. ''Do they have a good grasp on what should be on page one versus page three? Maybe he can make future editors by passing on his experience."
Griffin noted Ketter's experience, including work for The Patriot Ledger of Quincy, service on the Pulitzer Prize board, and teaching journalism at Boston University.
Ketter could not be reached for comment.
Griffin said that in response to a difficult economic climate, ''we have made a very small number of layoffs, probably under five, over the last couple of months." But he said the layoffs did not result from the acquisition by Community Newspaper Holdings.
He noted that other newspapers, including The Boston Globe and The New York Times, both owned by The
Franks ''has run a tight ship for the last several years, so the need for layoffs to respond to economic challenges is minimal -- much, much smaller than other New England newspaper companies," said Griffin. ''And no larger-scale layoffs are planned now."
''People have been calling me about layoffs," said Reed. ''It's just not true. We're not laying anybody off." He added that rumors of sharp cuts in the expense budget were also unfounded.
The sale to Community Holdings caps the evolution of Eagle-Tribune Co., which is based in North Andover. Until the late 1960s the company's flagship, The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, operated from offices on Essex Street in Lawrence. But as circulation among the increasingly transient Lawrence community dwindled, the company moved to its current North Andover location, expanded coverage into the suburbs, dropped ''Lawrence" from the newspaper's title, and cut back the number of Lawrence news stories on the front page.
In 2002, the company acquired daily papers in Salem, Newburyport, and Gloucester, adding to its roster of six semiweekly and weekly newspapers, including the Andover Townsman, Haverhill Gazette, and Derry (N.H.) News.
In all, about 700 area residents are employed by the company, which has a total circulation of nearly 106,000, Griffin said.
The 2002 acquisition mirrored a clustering phenomenon among larger media companies that purchase weeklies and dailies within the same geographical region, use one printing facility, offer joint advertising, and overlap staff to minimize costs and maximize profits. The proximity of the Eagle-Tribune-owned newspapers will make it possible for Community Newspaper Holdings to benefit from economies of scale, industry observers have said.
Through the paper's history, the Rogers family has been a constant, and Rosemary Connelly Smedile, chairwoman of North Andover's Board of Selectmen, said the company and the family ''have been extremely generous to the town of North Andover and the entire Merrimack Valley. . . . We hope the new owners of the newspaper will continue with that same generous spirit."
She added, ''There's a wonderful tradition when a family starts a business, and it grows and continues to grow through the generations. But unfortunately, things had to change for the good of the paper. It is sad, but as with many things, it's a new chapter."
Joyce Pellino Crane can be reached at crane@globe.com. 
