No, not chuck Norris, but he kicks just about as much ass — Howard Owens is on the market.
(He’s the online master that lead the Ventura County Star to an ONA award for General Excellence in 2004. And the recent leader of Bakersfield.com.)
I don’t know Howard personally and he probably has no clue who I am, but during my time at Scripps I was very impressed with him and his staff’s vision for the web.
If you’re on his RSS feed and check regularly, you probably saw the various iterations of that post during the past couple days after Bakersfield apparently rattled their sabre in his direction.
Here’s the current explanation of what happened:
When I interviewed for the job at the Californian, I laid out a plan for how we would improve the site and grow revenue. During the budget process, I refined that plan. Together, with my staff, we got right to business and executed that plan, but after a new executive structure, I had a new boss (I was surprised by the announcement) and we had very different ideas about how to define success and how to get there. I think we could have made it work, but the new boss had other plans.
It’s always a bummer to see things like this not work out (and I don’t know Bakersfield’s side, so I won’t speculate publicly) but I really thought Owens was turning Bakersfield around. Just check out their redesign.
But sometimes things don’t work out… So if you’ve got the need or know somewhere that does, snatch Owens up, because he won’t be looking for long.
July 4, 2006 at 11:55 pm
Will, nice post, thank you. I’ve heard the name before, but I can’t say what context. There’s a lot of talented people spread around Scripps. I haven’t had a chance to meet them all.
So, my changes were showing up in the RSS feed, uh? It was a struggle to find just the right wording. You’d think after a month to think about it, I would have gotten it right the first time.