LNP article “John Kirkpatrick steps down as president of LNP” went on to say:
“When I came here there were a number of mountains to climb: redesigning the paper, rebranding the paper, upgrading LancasterOnline, dealing with unsupported and aging production equipment, increasing our digital audience, and providing digital solutions to our advertisers, and structuring departments to make all those things happen. We dealt with all these and more.”
According to an AP article published in the Washington Times, “Kirkpatrick had been at LNP since 2013. He was previously publisher and president of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg. It was under his leadership that the Patriot-News won its first Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for its coverage of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal at Penn State University.”
We have no insights into the reason for Kirkpatrick’s abrupt departure other than his own explanation, but we do agree that during his presidency there were considerable improvements, not only journalistically, but hopefully financially.
LNP will never be the the New York Times, nor should we expect it to be. It must walk the narrow path of both serving the community and keeping afloat through the sale of advertisements during a time when print media is in rapid decline.
We wish the gentleman well in his future endeavors.
With the amount of advertising space that LNP allocates to it’s ‘news’ pages, along with an increasing amount of additional advertising flyers every other day, they should be financially set.