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Ron Kaye emailed the newsroom this note. The staff has been told to be on hand Monday morning at 10 am for the introduction of the next editor.
Everyone:All good things in life come to an end sooner or later, even my love affair with the Daily News.
What will always be with me is my love and respect for all of you. You've shown in the last two plus years just how talented and capable you are working together -- so capable you've made me obsolete. Under the circumstances, I'll always be grateful for that. Doug Hanes will be announcing my successor on Monday and I hope you will give that person the same effort and support you've given me. You have made this into a real newspaper with a soul and passion and creativity and shown your commitment to discover how this newspaper, any newspaper, can survive in the digital age. I know it can be done and I wish you all the best in whatever you, wherever the road leads you.
Thanks for everything, these have been the happiest and most fulfilling years of my life. Keep the faith, love always.
Ron
From publisher Doug Hanes:
First of all, let me express my thanks and gratitude to Ron Kaye for the 23 years of service to the Daily News. Ron has made numerous contributions to this newspaper as well as to the many communities we serve. Ron inspired achievement in a challenging way in a news media environment. We will miss you Ron and wish you all the best for you and your family.Please be advised that on Monday, April 7th at 10:00 a.m. I would like to invite each one of you to attend a short meeting in the newsroom to announce Ron's successor, who will be in attendance. Following that meeting, there will be a press release issued.
I look forward to working with all of you as we move the Daily News forward in a positive growth direction that will increase our readership, advertising and market share. These are difficult but exciting times as well. I'm very optimistic that with your help we will continue to grow our core, online and niche products. Our biggest challenge is how to accelerate our way into developing programs that will be rich in local content that inspires readership leading to aggregating new audiences. Big challenge but we will be successful as a team.
Have a good weekend.
Best Regards,
Doug
Have a good weekend? Yeah, right. After the jump, DN blogger Julia Scott's tribute to Kaye:
Today is the last day for my boss, Daily News editor Ron Kaye. He finally got canned by the powers that be. Ron is probably best known for standing up for Valley folks who felt estranged from City Hall and the rest of LA. But Ron's legacy, in my mind, is his riff on an old Saturday Night Live skit with Will Ferrell. Yes folks, I'm talking about MORE COWBELL.When Ron decided what we were doing in the newsroom was no longer working (circulation is dropping, if you have not heard), he gathered us up and asked us to take the paper's survival into our own hands. He asked us to innovate and try new things, to be disruptive like the cowbell-playing musician Ferrell plays in the SNL skit, which you can watch below (it gets good about a minute in). Who knows, maybe we would figure out how to make the newspaper profitable. If we effed up, at least we tried.
Ron called the strategy "more cowbell" and would lurch through the newsroom shouting this slogan while banging on a metal cowbell. A lot of reporters started blogs to be innovative, including myself. Writing the Bargain Hunter blog has helped me find my "voice," which sounds abstract but means putting onto paper the words that run through your head. Ron enabled me to find my voice and for that I sincerely thank him. Whenever in doubt, just use more cowbell.
Previously:
Ron Kaye out as Daily News editor