Diana Diamond is no longer executive editor of the Palo Alto Daily News group of free dailies. Diamond told the rival Palo Alto Weekly that she was fired Monday (March 27) without warning. The Weekly quotes Daily News Publisher Shareef Dajani as saying her departure was “basically just a parting of the ways. We both agreed to go our own way.”

The Weekly quotes Diamond as saying that the only hint she had was a review last week in which Dajani discussed her objections to recent decisions eliminating the Monday issue of the San Mateo Daily News and changing deadlines to conform with other Knight Ridder papers. Prior to that, “there was not one note, one e-mail or phone message criticizing my work,” she said. “I was shocked.”

Diamond was passionate about her job as editor. “She felt her six-day work weeks had resulted in significant improvements in stories and headlines,” Weekly editor Jay Thorwaldson wrote. “Prior to last November’s election, Diamond spent 79 hours conducting interviews with political candidates and wrote endorsement editorials in 49 different community races, she recalled.”

Replacing Diamond will be Lucinda Ryan, editor of the weekly Alameda Journal, also a Knight Ridder paper. Dajani was general manager of the Alameda weekly before he became publisher of the Daily News Group in January.

Diamond’s departure came a day before bids were being accepted for Knight Ridder’s Bay Area newspapers, including the Daily News Group.

Diamond has been a Daily News columnist since 2000, writing about local politics and community issues. She received awards from the PPC in 2002 and 2005. She became executive editor in March 2005. Previously Diamond was president of a public relations company, an editorial writer for the San Jose Mercury News, editor of a magazine for the legal profession and managing editor of a chain of 49 weekly newspapers in suburban Chicago.