The new guy in charge

After six weeks of suspense, the announcement came today as we logged onto The Oregonian's email system. We have a new publisher: N. Christian Anderson III, a homegrown Oregon boy who's been a newspaper editor in Oregon, Washington and California and, more recently, a widely respected publisher and consultant.

Chris, as he prefers to be called, is known as innovative, intense and intelligent -- truly one of the sharpest minds in the business. As publisher of the Orange County Register, he transformed an underachieving daily into a Pulitzer Prize-winning organization that took on and defeated the much larger Los Angeles Times, when the latter had a large Orange County bureau and hopes of crushing the hometown paper. Didn't happen.

At 59, Anderson is nearly three decades younger -- and way, way, way more savvy about the Internet -- than his predecessor Fred Stickel, who retired Sept. 18 at age 87 after 35 years as publisher of Oregon's oldest business. (He announced he was leaving Sept. 9.) Just last Thursday, I was among the dozens of people who attended Stickel's farewell dinner, an emotional sendoff at the Multnomah Athletic Club that featured tributes from friends, family and current staffers.

Like many colleagues, I was anticipating the next publisher would be a money guy, someone known for more generating revenues and running a tight ship on the business side. I think we're fortunate to have a new guy in charge who came up on the news side and appreciates the journalistic challenges, yet who's savvy enough to know we need to operate as an information organization and not just a newspaper.

Here's a link to the news story on OregonLive. And here's a factoid o' the day: Anderson shares something in common with Chris Johns, editor in chief of National Geographic Magazine, one of the world's most respected publications. Both graduated from Oregon State University and both served as editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Barometer.