Following the lead of the Miami Herald (and, to a lesser extent, the Sun-Sentinel), the Palm Beach Post announced some major management changes this morning.
Top Editor John Bartosek will move down to the investigations editor role and Managing Editor Bill Rose is retiring in the summer, giant developments both.
Taking over Bartosek's role is digital VP Tim Burke, who will become '"vice president for audience development and executive editor, overseeing the newsroom and all the company's web sites."
Basically that makes Burke the content czar.
Publisher Alex Taylor seems to like Burke. He was quoted in his own newspaper saying the new boss is "a creative newsman and web developer who I believe will change the way we report and present across all mediums."
Really, Alex? Tell us more.
"Tim will be working on restructuring the way we produce products to create an intense customer focus that results in products that are more resilient and adaptive to our changing readers," he continued.
Nothing like some meaningless corporate gobbledy-gook to explain things, huh? Used to be newspapers tried to sound like journalists instead of inane bureaucrats. He could have just said that Burke would work to make the news more vital to people's lives, with an intensely local focus. I know that's not very good either, but Taylor sounds like a caricature of a corpo-clown in that quote. (This kind of Office Space-type babble isn't new from Taylor. Why doesn't he get one of his better journos to translate his stuff for him before he puts it out for the masses?).
Other changes involve Charles Gerardi and Christopher Caneles; click here for more details.
