Denver-based ap Inc. today said Detroit News editor and publisher David J. Butler will become the company’s vice president for news.
Butler, 56, will oversee the content of the group’s newspapers and websites. ap is the nation’s fourth-largest newspaper publisher and owns The Denver Post.
Butler will be replaced at The Detroit News by Denver Post editorial page editor Jonathan Wolman, 56. Denver Post editorial page writer Dan Haley, 37, will take over as editorial page editor.
The changes were announced earlier this afternoon by William Dean Singleton, ap’s vice chairman and CEO, and Steve Rossi, the company’s executive vice president and chief executive officer.
“The rapid changes in the newspaper industry make it imperative that our newspapers expand and consolidate their print and online efforts,” Singleton said in a statement. “Dave Butler has been a trail blazer in this strategy in Detroit, and he is the logical choice to oversee content revolution throughout ap.”
Wolman joined The Denver Post in 2004. Prior to that he worked for the Associated Press.
“I’ll miss the give and take of the Colorado policy issues that tend to dominate our editorial pages, but many of them are front-page subjects in Michigan, too – education and energy, for example, to say nothing of state fiscal challenges,” Wolman said.
Looking ahead, he added, “Michigan industry is in the doldrums, and for us the transformation of the auto industry is both a local story and a global one.”
