THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 9, 1997 TAG: 9701090329
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF REPORT
LENGTH: 62 lines
Dennis Hartig, a 17-year news veteran of The Virginian-Pilot, was promoted Wednesday to managing editor. He will be the paper's second-ranking news editor and will oversee day-to-day news operations as The Pilot prepares for an expansion aimed at increasing daily readership.
Hartig's promotion was one of several senior-level newsroom changes announced by Kay Tucker Addis, who was named in November as editor of the 205,000-circulation newspaper.
In addition, Joyce Ingram, a deputy managing editor of The Pilot, was named as head of the newspaper's ``local lens'' teams, which include reporters covering business, the military, sports and entertainment.
Hartig's position is a reinstated one. There had been no such post under The Pilot's previous editor, Cole Campbell, who departed in September to become editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Addis said she decided to re-establish the managing editor position to focus increased attention on the newspaper's daily news report. She pointed out that The Pilot this year will spend an additional $2 million to build readership, which has sagged in recent years. About half of that will be for advertising and promotion, about $500,000 for the hiring of 15 additional journalists, and the remaining $500,000 for news content additions, beginning in mid-February.
In his new post, Hartig will participate in daily news meetings at which stories are discussed and prioritized. He will also coordinate regular critiques of the content of each section.
A Norfolk native, Hartig's experience with local newspapering began in the summer before his senior year at Randolph-Macon College. He worked as an intern in the Portsmouth office of The Ledger-Star, a now-defunct afternoon sister of The Pilot, and covered everything from crime to the Coast Guard to community groups such as the Kiwanis.
``It was the best summer of my life,'' Hartig said in an interview Wednesday.
He returned to college energized for newspaper journalism. After graduating, he worked 8 1/2 years at The Bulletin in Martinsville, becoming editor of that south-central Virginia daily at age 26. But he longed to return to his native Hampton Roads, so he joined The Pilot in 1979 as editor of one of the newspaper's community tabloids, the Virginia Beach Beacon.
During his tenure in Virginia Beach, Hartig won a reputation as a hard-driving editor with a penchant for muckraking. But as he rose in the ranks, eventually becoming deputy managing editor and, most recently, interim editor prior to Addis' hiring, his view of the role of a newspaper editor broadened.
Hartig became an advocate for public or community journalism, in which journalists seek to involve citizens in identifying problems and finding solutions to them.
He also has encouraged greater coverage of community and individual achievements, saying that such coverage is necessary to ``reflect the whole truth of the community.'' By doing so, he said, The Pilot will gain credibility when it reports on problems in Hampton Roads.
Hartig said a key goal in his new position will be to make the newspaper more useful to readers on a day-to-day basis. ``Whether you spend five minutes or 50 minutes with us, we don't want you to say there was nothing in the paper today,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: Dennis Hartig