Alan Rosenberg, managing editor at The Providence Journal, will succeed David Butler as executive editor of the Journal when Butler retires in June. Rosenberg has been with the Journal for the past 39 years. He is also an adjunct professor at Rhode Island College. Rosenberg began his news career as a reporting intern for The Herald-Dispatch of Huntington, W. Va., and the Detroit Free Press before joining the Journal in 1978. He has had a number of key jobs in the local news and features departments. Michael McDermott will take over as managing editor. McDermott is assistant managing editor for breaking news and feature sections of the Journal. Butler’s newspaper career began as a reporter for The Southern Illinoisan of Carbondale, Ill., in 1972. He was named metropolitan editor there in 1978. He also has been assistant city editor at The Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and the then-Fort Lauderdale News. Butler later was appointed editor at The Messenger-Inquirer of Owensboro, Ky. He has been an editor at the Jacksonville (Fla.) Journal and assistant managing editor of the Rocky Mountain News of Denver. Butler also was editor at the New Haven (Conn.) Register. In 1997, Butler joined the MediaNews Group newspaper chain, which later merged into the Digital First Media newspaper chain. From 1997 until 2005, Butler was executive vice president for news and editor of the Los Angeles Daily News and of the Los Angeles News Group. In 2005, he became editor and publisher of the Detroit News. He also has been the MediaNews Group’s vice president for news in Denver and editor of the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, and executive vice president and editor in chief of the parent Digital First Media and editor and senior vice president of the San Jose Mercury News and its sister newspapers, the Contra Costa Times and Oakland Tribune, all in California.
The Transition was written, at least in part, from a published report by Bulletin correspondent Eloni Porcher, an undergraduate student at Northeastern University.