Death of a newspaper man
I wasn't fortunate enough to know Chuck Hauser, who died Sunday in Chapel Hill. Hauser was managing editor of the Greensboro Daily News in 1965 and 1966 and then served as executive news editor of the Daily News and the Greensboro Record for two more years. An awful lot of journalists here who did know him speak highly of him.
After stints at other papers, he landed the position of executive editor at the Providence Journal-Bulletin where the paper won a Pulitzer Prize under his stewardship.
The alt-weekly Providence Phoenix has an insightful take on his time there (thanks to Romenesko). "So it was a shock, after he was forced out of the paper in 1989, after (Publisher) Metcalf's mysterious death in a bicycle accident, to realize what Hauser had accomplished in his 16 years.
"Personal columns, of the sort now written by Bob Kerr and Mark Patinkin, were started. An investigative team was formed. From the obscurity of the copy desk, Hauser had picked Joel P. Rawson to run the newsroom, recognizing Rawson as a rare journalistic genius who would help Hauser launch the Journal as a "writer's" paper, specializing not in 500-word stories, but series and narrative pieces that ran into the thousands of words, some literally after years of reporting.
"A transformed Journal was not only the trusted "paper of record" that it had long been, but now it was also lively, deep, adventurous on its best days, and seemed to crackle with excitement."
Hauser retired to Chapel Hill and taught at the journalism school. His influence will continue to be felt through his former students at newspapers across the country.
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