Melanie Sill is named The Bee's new top editor

Hailed as a risk taker who will push the newspaper further into the Internet age, North Carolina newspaper editor Melanie Sill was named editor and senior vice president of The Bee on Tuesday.

Sill, introduced to a packed newsroom by Publisher Janis Heaphy, pledged to expand The Bee's presence online while keeping the paper true to its 150-year-old journalistic traditions. She said The Bee needs to meld "the revolutionary power of the Internet and the enduring power of the newspaper."

For the past five years, the 48-year-old Sill has been executive editor of the News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C. Like The Bee, the Raleigh paper is owned by The McClatchy Co. of Sacramento.

In her new role at The Bee, Sill will oversee the news and opinion pages, Heaphy said. Previously, the editorial page editor, David Holwerk, reported directly to the publisher.

Heaphy said The Bee will maintain its journalistic tradition of keeping its news coverage independent of the newspaper's editorial opinions.

Sill replaces Rick Rodriguez, who resigned Oct. 18 amid a disagreement with Heaphy over the paper's long-term direction. Sill praised Rodriguez's commitment to investigative reporting.

Looking forward, she said, The Bee needs to change rapidly in an era in which newspapers are struggling against competition from the Web and elsewhere.

"If you're in a newsroom and the editor doesn't say that change is needed, you should leave," Sill said. "The times we're in really demand change."

Heaphy agreed, saying the paper needs "the kind of leadership that involves risk-taking." The publisher said Sill's appointment will bring about a newsroom "truly capable of innovation and truly capable of risk-taking."

Sill didn't spell out specific changes but made it clear a greater online presence will be a part of The Bee's future.

Sill has spent her entire 25-year career at the Raleigh paper. She was the editor in charge of overseeing "Boss Hog," an investigative series on North Carolina's pork production industry that won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for public service.

Sill also oversaw an award-winning investigative project on the state's juvenile justice system.

As executive editor, "she's made the N&O the best paper in the state," said Philip Meyer, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and author of "The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age."

Anders Gyllenhaal, her predecessor at Raleigh and currently the executive editor of McClatchy's Miami Herald, called her "an original thinker, certainly among the very best journalists I've ever worked with. She just has tons of ideas; they come all the time, not just about news and stories but strategies, how to create new things."

Sill was in the thick of one of the most explosive stories to hit North Carolina in recent years, the accusations of rape against a group of Duke University lacrosse players.

After the players were eventually exonerated, the national media were roundly criticized for taking the rape allegations at face value. The News & Observer's public editor said the paper did a far better job than most of digging beneath the surface but committed some "serious missteps" in the first few weeks, including making references to the accuser as "a victim."

Sill said Tuesday the Duke case was "one of the hardest stories I've ever worked with," but her paper's coverage stands up well. "Our news reporting was pretty straight," she said.

Sill was born in Nebraska, raised in Hawaii and is a journalism graduate of UNC Chapel Hill. She also has Northern California roots: Her father lives in Modesto and she has sisters in Auburn and Novato. She is married to Bennett Groshong, a software developer and electrical engineer.

She takes over The Bee as the paper, like most of its peers, struggles with declining circulation and advertising revenue. In the last year, The Bee has reduced its newsroom staff through buyouts and attrition and closed its San Francisco and Los Angeles news bureaus.

The Raleigh paper has been able to increase circulation the past few years, although it dipped slightly in the most recent numbers reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. With a circulation of 177,361, the News & Observer is about two-thirds the size of The Bee.

"I don't think there's a magic bullet" to improving circulation, Sill said, but news content "does play a part."

In the 1990s, the News & Observer was among the first newspapers to go online, and Sill said she wants to make The Bee's online operations a better forum for reader interaction. The Raleigh paper operates a separate Web site that lets readers post events and photos directly online.

Sill said she's glad that The Bee's main Web site, www.sacbee.com, is about to be overhauled. "I don't think it does justice to the wealth of content" produced by the newsroom, she said.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Dale Kasler, (916) 321-1066.