The Knight Ridder-owned Daily News Group — which includes free dailies in Palo Alto, Los Gatos, San Mateo, Burlingame, San Mateo and Berkeley — announced today that it has a new executive editor. As the PPC reported yesterday, former executive editor Diana Diamond left the paper on Monday. She said she was fired but publisher Shareef Dajani said she and the company decided to go their own ways.
The following is today’s page one story announcing the new editor. Since the Daily News doesn’t put its copy online, the story is pasted below.
Headline: Ryan takes editing helm at Daily News Group
Lucinda Ryan, a longtime Bay Area journalist, has been named executive editor of the Daily News Group.
Having started her journalism career at the Alameda Journal in 1987, Ryan went on to work as an education beat reporter for The Montclarion. Ryan later joined the Oakland Tribune as a general assignment reporter, eventually becoming city editor of the San Leandro Times. She went on to join the Daily Review in Hayward as city editor and worked there until returning to the Alameda Journal as editor about five years ago. Ryan has won two East Bay Press Club awards for editorials and one award from the California Newspaper Publishers Association.
“I know how important local newspapers are and, as a longtime fan of the Peninsula and its towns, I know that residents and business owners are involved with their communities,” Ryan said. “Our newest publication, the East Bay Daily News, is also providing readers in Berkeley, Oakland and neighboring cities with stories that affect them. News specific to Rockridge, Piedmont, Montclair and other East Bay communities is different — often impossible — to find in that region’s metropolitan dailies. The need for local news has not diminished, but the newspapers that carry it have.”
Shareef Dajani, publisher of the Daily News Group, said that Ryan’s background in community news would be valuable to the future of the newspaper chain. “One of the staples of the Daily News is local reporting, and moving forward, we are looking to grow upon that,” Dajani said.
Ryan replaces former Executive Editor Diana Diamond, who served the Daily News for more than a year. Diamond had a passion for Palo Alto and the Daily News Group of papers and her presence in the newsroom will be missed. — Staff Report.