Former KR veep named J-school dean

Jerry Ceppos, former vice president of news for Knight Ridder, has been named the new journalism dean for the University of Nevada, Reno, a campus spokeswoman announced Friday.

Ceppos was the only remaining candidate after Thomas Hodson, director of the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, and another unidentified candidate withdrew their names within the last two months from the list of finalists chosen after a national search.

Ceppos is scheduled to take over as head of UNR's Reynolds School of Journalism sometime in January, Jane Tors, the university's communications director, said Friday. He will earn an annual salary of $175,000, Tors said. Other terms of his contract weren't immediately available.

Ceppos replaces the school's previous dean, Cole Campbell, who died in an automobile accident last January.

Ceppos is an adjunct professor at San Jose State University and a consultant for Leading Edge Associates.

From 1995 until 1999, he was executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News. Prior to that, he had spent 23 years in various news positions at The Miami Herald and the Mercury News.

Click on the headline to read the full story by Lenita Powers in the Reno Gazette-Journal.