DMN managing editor George Rodrigue joining Gannett8 as assistant news director

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
George Rodrigue, managing editor at The Dallas Morning News since 2004, is leaving that position to join Gannett8 as assistant news director.

His departure from the paper was announced in a memo to staffers Thursday by DMN editor Bob Mong, who himself has announced he’ll be retiring sometime in 2015.

Rodrigue, whose last day at the paper will be Sept. 25th, was hired by Mong as a city hall reporter in 1983. His interim replacement as managing editor at the DMN will be staffer Keith Campbell, Mong announced.

It’s fair to say that Rodrigue had been looking for a while. To say any more would be to betray a confidence.

Gannett, which took control of WFAA8 from Belo late last year, has a content-sharing arrangement with Fort Worth’s Star-Telegram. This went into effect after the DMN ended its longstanding synergistic relationship with Belo-owned WFAA8 and signed a new deal with Fort Worth-based NBC5. So whatever Rodrigue’s ties to DMN staffers, he’ll have to play synergistic baseball with the Star-Telegram. In other words, that downtown Dallas driveway between the DMN and Gannett8 might as well be a moat under the relatively new scheme of things.

Mong praised Rodrigue as a “polymath, because he is so skilled at so many things . . . All of us are indebted to George for his many contributions to journalism, to this community and for the way he developed so many promising journalists.”

Gannett8 has been slumping in the ratings, lately winning only at 10 p.m. with any sort of regularity while struggling to stay in the ratings picture at 6 a.m. and at 5 and 6 p.m.

Rodrigue doesn’t mess around when it comes to whipping reporters into shape. His new newsroom boss will be Gannett8 news director Carolyn Mungo, who was hired by president-general manager Mike Devlin in February 2012.

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