Doug is the editor of the Plain Dealer in Cleveland. Yesterday I whined because the “about” link on his new blog was empty. The offending link has been removed but there’s still no “about” page, so I figured I’d Google the guy and see what I came across.
Found this bio at the American Press Institute:
Douglas Clifton
Editor, The Plain Dealer
E&P Editor of the Year, 2003Doug Clifton has been editor of The Plain Dealer since June 1, 1999. He began his newspaper career in 1970 at The Miami Herald’s Action Line. Over the next 17 years he held a variety of reporting and editing assignments at The Herald, including city editor and deputy managing editor. He subsequently served as news editor of Knight Ridder’s Washington bureau and as managing editor of The Charlotte Observer, another Knight Ridder newspaper.
Mr. Clifton returned to The Miami Herald in 1991 as executive editor. Under his leadership, The Herald won three Pulitzer Prizes, one for meritorious public service in 1992 for coverage of Hurricane Andrew, a second for commentary and a third for investigative reporting. During that time The Herald also was a Pulitzer finalist in feature writing, commentary, investigative reporting and twice in photography.
Clifton, originally from Brooklyn, New York, graduated from Dowling College in Long Island, with a political science degree and served three years in the U.S. Army, including a year as an artillery officer in Vietnam in the late 1960s. He and his wife, Peg Clifton, have two adult children and two grandchildren. They live in Bratenahl.
It’s worth noting that Doug helped the Herald win the Pulitzer for its coverage of Hurricane Andrew. One of my favorite all-time headlines was the Day Two coverage of the storm: “We Need Help” in huge type across A1 (I work with the guy who wrote that hed, by the way. Lots of Merc people have Herald years in their resumes). It don’t know if this happened to Clifton, but lots of people spent two or three days in the Herald newsroom covering the storm story and went home to find their homes turned into toothpicks. I’ve always been super proud of those folks, so it’s nice to see one of my heroes in the blogosphere.