A new editor-in-chief of Newsday is not being selected from among the current crop of editors at the newspaper.The board of Daily News Ltd, publishers of Newsday, decided on Tuesday to recruit someone from outside the company to fill the position left vacant by the death of Therese Mills.Sources said the company was still in negotiations with the candidate and was reluctant to divulge the name,Mills, 85, who held the positions of Editor-in-Chief, CEO and executive chairman, died on January 1 after a brief illness. The board met soon after her funeral on Tuesday to decide how to fill the vacancies created by her death.
Reports are that an editor and managing editor and a operations director, who will report directly to the board, will be appointed but there is no word on the prospective candidates for those positions, which currently don't exist in the company. At present Camille Moreno, assistant to the Editor-in-Chief, is in charge of the day-to-day operations of the newspaper. Veteran journalist John Babb, who was been with Newsday from its inception, and Ken Chee Hing hold associate editor positions.Up to yesterday, staff at the Chacon Street-based newspaper had only been told about the proposed restructuring of the newsroom management by Moreno who attended the board meeting but had not been given any information on the proposed candidates to fill the vacancies. There has been no word on who will take over as CEO.
The directors of Newsday include Dawn Ford, chairman of Choko Holdings Ltd, the largest shareholder with a 40 per cent stake in the company. Ford was appointed to the board last month, filling a vacancy that developed in October 2010 with the death of Wayne Chookolingo, who was the managing director of Mirror Group Publication Ltd, which also publishes the Mirror newspapers. The other shareholders are the Chin Lee family, insurance executive Steve Castagne, Guardian columnist Clevon Raphael and Michael Hart, who owns one per cent. Mills's shares in Newsday are expected to be passed on to her heirs. She had three children.Newsday started in 1993 with Daniel Chookolingo as chairman and CEO. Mills was appointed editor-in-chief less than two months before its first publication in September that year.
