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Carolina Garcia, the editor of the Daily News, will now be the executive editor for the Daily Breeze and the Press-Telegram in Long Beach as well. Breeze editor Toni Sciacqua becomes managing editor - digital for the group. Sue Schmitt, the editor & general manager of the Press-Telegram, has "decided not to remain as a full-time employee of the company as part of this transition." It's the next, big shoe to fall after yesterday's axing of the DN's features and food editors. In Northern California, the MediaNews papers have been largely merged into one product — and many expect this is the first step toward that occurring here. After the jump is the memo from Jack Klunder, named last month as publisher of all three papers:
Metro Group Staff:Effective Monday, October 24, 2011, we are announcing several changes in the senior management structure of the metro group of newspapers within LANG.
The three respective newsrooms of the Daily News, Daily Breeze and Press-Telegram will be led by one executive editor. Carolina Garcia has been selected to serve in this new role.
Carolina has a long and distinguished newspaper career and joined the Daily News as editor in April 2008 after serving as executive editor of The Monterey County Herald for five years.
Toni Sciacqua, the current editor of the Daily Breeze, has been named managing editor – digital, for the metro group. She will oversee all web content for our daily newspaper websites as well as our four weeklies, The Gazettes, Beach Reporter, Palos Verdes News and Impacto. Toni will report to Carolina.
Sue Schmitt, the editor & general manager of the Press-Telegram, has decided not to remain as a full-time employee of the company as part of this transition. Sue, who has served a critical leadership role in Long Beach and has been a valuable contributor to the company in general, will be working on several projects during the next few weeks and we hope to tap into her expertise on other projects down the road.
Ron Hasse will be named V.P. of publishing operations for the metro group. Ron will continue to oversee all circulation and marketing functions and will have added responsibilities including all audience development, operations and niche publications. Reporting to Ron will be Simon Grieve, publisher of the Grunion Gazette and Paul Silva, publisher of the PV News and Beach Reporter.
Hillary Gamache will assume the day to day responsibilities of publishing Impacto and will report to Ron. Additionally, Hillary will retain her role as marketing research/development manager as part of the LANG research team headed by Liz Hamm.
These new assignments are designed to provide effective leadership across a new consolidated management structure serving multiple publications. I believe we have a very talented group of people to help guide us through difficult times.
Please join me in congratulating Carolina, Toni, Ron and Hillary in their new roles as well as wishing Sue much success in the future.