News editors group taps Milton Coleman of The Washington Post as its next president

ASNE taps editor from Washington Post as president

WASHINGTON — The American Society of News Editors named Washington Post Senior Editor Milton Coleman as its new president Wednesday.

Coleman, 63, succeeds the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s editor, Martin Kaiser, as the head of the group. ASNE is a nonprofit founded in 1922 to promote the freedom of the press and develop ethical and professional standards for the news industry.

In remarks to the group’s annual conference in Washington, Coleman said he wants ASNE to play a more active role in helping its members cope with the technological changes roiling the industry. He said the group will be in contact with its members more often and have more active board members and committees.

Coleman, who joined the Post as a metro reporter in 1976, spoke in dramatic terms about the challenges facing traditional media.

“There are legal adversaries. There are governmental adversaries. There are ideological adversaries. There are financial and spiritual adversaries,” he said. “The road ahead on the business side is treacherous.”

News organizations have been battered by competition for readers and advertisers online, and Internet advertising has not replaced the loss of print revenue at newspapers and magazines. ASNE’s annual conference was focused on ways that the media might do reporting and make money through new technology such as online social networks and gadgets such as Apple’s iPad tablet computer.

The group also elected five new board members for three-year terms: Ronnie Agnew, executive editor of The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss.; Pamela Fine, the Knight Chair in News at the University of Kansas; Anders Gyllenhaal, executive editor of The Miami Herald; Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor at The Associated Press; and Melanie A. Sill, editor of The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee.