Charles Apple

Susie Ellwood, CEO of the Detroit Media Partnership announced today that Steve Dorsey — currently, deputy managing editor for presentation and innovation for the Free Press — will become vice president for research and development for the JOA.

The promotion takes effect March 8.

Ellwood’s announcement today said, in part:

In this role, Steve will be responsible for helping to create a continuous and renewable environment in which ideas can grow and be brought to life for Detroit Media Partnership, the Detroit Free Press, and The Detroit News.  He will report to me.

One of his first assignments will be to continue the work he and a small team have been involved with since late 2009, creating an idea development workflow to gather and track ideas and feedback from across all divisions and companies, and to help determine where best to commit resources.

Why make this investment now?

This role is the direct result of feedback we heard from throughout our organizations – we need to harness everyone’s creativity and ideas now more than ever to be as efficient, progressive and profitable as we can be.

It may seem like an unusual time for us to be adding a new position to the Executive Committee, but in fact, I think this is a critical time to do so. Newspapers traditionally have not invested in being transformative — and we’re paying for it now. With this move we are continuing our commitment to change that – and continuing our commitment that Detroit Media Partnership will be an industry leader in innovation and problem solving.

This appointment is only one piece of that larger puzzle – creating a culture of ideas has to occur throughout the organizations — from the bottom up, from the top down. It must involve people from every division and level of our company – we want to hear from you. Steve is here to help us do that in ways and to depths we’ve not done it before.

A 1994 graduate of Syracuse University, Steve spent a year as photo, graphics and design editor of the York (Pa.) Daily Record before becoming presentation director of the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader. He moved to Detroit in 1999 to become design director and was promoted to DME two years ago. He’s lectured at Syracuse and at the Poynter Institute and spent three years as publications director for the Society for News Design.

Steve, of course, is also vice president of the Society for News Design. Plus, he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.

Best wishes, Steve!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 7:44 pm and is filed under Innovative ideas, Job changes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.