The Minnesota Daily’s board of directors once again chose a relative newcomer to lead the paper Thursday when it picked associate editor R. Scott Rogers as 1997-98 editor in chief.
Like current editor in chief Gregg Aamot, Rogers had been at the paper for only eight months when he applied for the position. A transfer student from George Washington University in Washington, DC, he helped create the now-defunct IT magazine there. He is also the son of former WCCO broadcaster Jim Rogers.
“The board felt he was the best fit for the Daily with the experience he’d had. He helped start IT from the ground up,” said Aamot.
At IT magazine, Rogers said, he “did everything,” including an investigative column and a stint as editor in chief. He also served as an editorial cartoonist, “a calling I wisely abandoned.”
A good number of the Daily’s top editors sought the position this year. They included managing editor Alan Bjerga, associate editor and former columnist Michelle Kibiger, and sports editor Matthew Cross, a four-year Daily veteran.
A fifth candidate, associate editor and former student government reporter Brett Knapp dropped out after being hired as sports editor by the Stillwater Evening Gazette.
Rogers will take over the newsroom from Aamot on June 15, managing a staff of 88 that puts out a 25,000-circulation paper, five days a week.
Currently pursuing an individually designed major in jurisprudence and culture, Rogers said he intends to apply to law school after getting his degree here.
Among the changes he would like to see at the Daily is the hiring of a reader’s representative, akin to Lou Gelfand at the Star Tribune, to handle concerns about the coverage and write about them. “We need a voice for the Daily in answering some of the criticism we get from the community,” he said.
Rogers also said he wants to be aggressive in bringing in talent from outside the journalism school. “I don’t think we have the luxury of just being on the lookout,” he said. “We have to be going to them. I think that will result in a more broadly relevant Daily.”