:The Virginian-Pilot; :Jan 6, 2007; :Hampton Roads; :15 Cole Campbell | Former Pilot editor dies Journalist recalled as urging papers to embrace change BY JOHN WARREN THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT Cole Campbell, a former editor of The Virginian-Pilot who urged a broad rethinking of journalism conventions, died Friday morning in a singlevehicle crash in Nevada. Campbell, 53, lost control of his Honda SUV on an icy patch of highway in Reno and it flipped, according to a story from the Reno Gazette-Journal. Campbell died in a nearby hospital. Campbell joined The Virginian-Pilot in 1990, and was the editor from 1993 to 1996. Among other stops in his career, he also was editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a fellow at journalism think tank The Poynter Institute and – from 2004 until his death – dean of the journalism school at the University of Nevada, Reno. He was a native of Pulaski in southwest Virginia, the son of an Episcopal minister. While at the helm of The Pilot, Campbell became a leading national proponent of “public journalism,” a notion that newspapers should be active participants in communities rather than detached spectators. Former Pilot co-workers described him as a “big picture” man, not a detail person, and he met with resistance from staff members unsure how to translate his broad strokes. “I didn’t always agree with Cole, maybe because I didn’t understand him,” said Denis Finley, the paper’s current editor. “But I admired the way he was always thinking ahead, always moving forward. “The thing that really stood out to me was that he never let criticism bother him; he was always too busy thinking about his next big plan for the future of journalism,” he said. Editorial Page Editor Dennis Hartig said Campbell’s determination to make the newspaper’s report more relevant to readers is still felt, 10 years after he left. “We talk about it today in terms of listening to readers,” said Hartig, who was a deputy managing editor under Campbell. “But that all began with Cole.” At The Pilot, Campbell pushed for innovation in storytelling and page design. When he left The Pilot for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1996, he became only the second editor in the newspaper’s history who didn’t have the last name Pulitzer. Campbell encouraged staffers to embrace change, but his brand of change met with great resistance. He left in 2000 amid high staff turnover and declining subscriptions. Tall and with thick glasses, he was an easygoing, goodhumored intellectual with piles upon piles of partially read books on every subject in his office. In fact, Hartig said, people long thought Campbell was best suited for academia, not the “triage” atmosphere of a newsroom. That’s where he ended up, as a journalism dean. There, he continued his march for change. “Students are taught rituals handed down in newsrooms,” Campbell wrote on the journalism school’s Web site. “What if we taught invention as much as convention?” Campbell is survived by his wife, Catherine, and son, Clarke, and a daughter, Claire, from a previous marriage. • Reach John Warren at (757) 446-2356 or john.warren@pilotonline .com. MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT FILE PHOTO Cole Campbell was editor of The Virginian-Pilot from 1993 to 1996. He was a leading national proponent of “public journalism,” the idea that newspapers should be active in communities rather than spectators. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com