Longtime Virginia Gazette publisher Bill O’Donovan will leave his position as publisher and vice president of The Virginia Gazette, Tidewater Review and Williamsburg Magazine by the end of the year.
O’Donovan’s departure is part of “consolidation of senior management at the Daily Press Media Group,” according to stories published online Friday afternoon in the Gazette and Daily Press. Digby Solomon, president and CEO of the company, will become publisher for all the group’s publications.
Reached by phone, O’Donovan told WYDaily he had no statement. “It’s pretty much what you see” in the Virginia Gazette and Daily Press stories, he said.
No other editor roles at The Virginia Gazette or Tidewater Review are affected by the consolidation.
Solomon’s administrative assistant said he was unavailable for comment until Jan. 2.
O’Donovan started at The Virginia Gazette in 1971 as a reporter. He became publisher in 1986, when the company was sold to Easton, Md.-based Chesapeake Publishing Corporation, according to a 2008 interview O’Donovan gave a student at the College of William & Mary for a project on the newspaper’s “The Last Word” column. The Tribune Company, which owns the Daily Press, purchased The Virginia Gazette in 2001.
O’Donovan was inducted into Virginia Commonwealth University’s Communications Hall of Fame in 2011. In July, he was appointed by the Virginia Press Association (VPA) to serve on the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. He is a previous recipient of the VPA’s D. Lathan Mims Award for Editorial Leadership.
It was not immediately clear if O’Donovan’s departure was related to Tribune Company, the parent company of the Daily Press, emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to the Tribune Company website, the Federal Communication Commission approved Tribune’s request for assignment of its broadcast licenses on Nov. 16. That cleared the way for Tribune to emerge from bankruptcy, a process it’s been involved in for nearly four years. The Tribune website, along with many media reports, has said it’s aiming to leave bankruptcy on or before Dec. 31.
