Jerome Ceppos

Jerome Merle Ceppos (October 14, 1946 – July 29, 2022) was an American journalist, news executive, and educator.

He is recognized as the former top editor of San Jose Mercury News and the Dean of the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University.

With 50 years of experience as a journalist, he was awarded with a recognition from the Society of Professional Journalists for his consistently high ethical standards.

Ceppos was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland.

He attended Northwood High School, where he edited The Red and Black school newspaper.

He graduated from University of Maryland in 1969 with a BA in journalism.

While at the University of Maryland, he edited The Diamondback, the school's independent student newspaper.

He joined SDX, now the Society of Professional Journalists, and was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa.

Ceppos's first full-time professional position was at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, where he was reporter, assistant city editor, and night city editor between 1969 and 1972.

In 1972, he moved to the Miami Herald, where he was assistant city editor, their first national foreign editor, and assistant managing editor for news before moving to the San Jose Mercury News in 1981, where he was associate editor, managing editor, senior vice president, and executive editor.

Gary Webb, a reporter for The Mercury News hired in 1987 while Ceppos was executive editor, conducted a year-long investigation of cocaine dealing in Los Angeles, which was published in The Mercury News in three segmens between August 18 and August 20, 1996, under the title "Dark Alliance."

Initial prsise for the series was followed by criticism from major media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and ''The Los Angeles Times'x. After initially defending the series, Ceppos commissioned an internal review.

At the end of March 1997, Ceppos told Webb that he was going to publish the internal review findings in a column, which appeared on May 11, 1997.

Ceppos took personal responsibility for the series and its flaws in his opening sentence, writing "Few things in life are harder than owning up to one's shortcomings, but I need to tell you about an important case in which I believe that we fell short of my standards for the Mercury News."

In the column, Ceppos continued to defend parts of the series, writing that it had "solidly documented" that the drug ring described in the series did have connections with the Contras and sold large quantities of cocaine in inner-city Los Angeles.

But, Ceppos wrote, the series "did not meet our standards" in four areas.

1) It presented only one interpretation of conflicting evidence and in one case "did not include information that contradicted a central assertion of the series." 2) The series' estimates of the money involved was presented as fact instead of an estimate.

3) The series oversimplified how the crack epidemic grew. 4) The series "created impressions that were open to misinterpretation" through "imprecise language and graphics."

Ceppos noted that Webb did not agree with these conclusions.

His column concluded, asking, "How did these shortcomings occur? ... I believe that we fell short at every step of our process: in the writing, editing and production of our work. Several people here share that burden ... But ultimately, the responsibility was, and is, mine."

Ceppos's mea culpa won praise in the journalism profession.

He was awarded, along with two others, the first Ethics in Journalism award from the Society of Professional Journalists for "superior ethical conduct."

Critics suggested he had caved to outside pressure, including that of the government and its agencies.

While managing editor, the newspaper won two Pulitzer Prize[]s. He also initiated a [[Vietnamese language edition, Viet Mercury and a Spanish language edition, Nuevo Mundo. He supported digital initiatives at a print journalism company and successfully championed diversity hiring. In 1999, he became vice president for news at Knight-Ridder, then the second=largest newspaper chain in the United States. He left the position in 2005.

Webb was found dead in his [Carmichael, California]] home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head.

Ceppos was consultant with Leading Edge Associates, a management consulting firm in San Jose, California, from 2006 to 2009.

In 2007, he was Fellow in media ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.

From 2008 to 2011, he was dean and professor at the Reynolds School in Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, holding the Fred W. Smith Chair in Journalism.

As incoming dean, he commissioned a large banner with the words of the First Amendment to hang in the school.

He continued his professional goals by increasing diversity hiring and changing the curriculum to require cross-platform training for all students.

In July 2011, he became dean and William B. Dickinson Distinguished Professor at the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University.

He repeated his display of the First Amendment and moved the curriculum toward online media.

He taught media ethics.

The 2014 film Kill the Messenger was based on the controversy with Oliver Platt playing Ceppos.

Opinions about the movie paralleled those about the original series.

There was controversy as to whether Ceppos had been contacted or not regarding the factual aspects of the movie.

He stepped down as dean at the end of the 2017–2018 academic year.

He continued to teach "Media Writing," "Media Management," and "Media Ethics and Social Responsibility."

He died at his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on July 29, 2022.

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