Hal Ritter, who was the deputy managing editor for business coverage at USA Today when it launched back in 1982, has been named the new business editor at the Associated Press, sources confirmed.
Ritter resigned from USA Today in 2004 as managing editor of news in the wake of allegations about reporter Jack Kelley’s sourcing for stories. When he resigned, Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz called him a “divisive figure” in the newsroom.
Ritter joined the Money section of USA Today as one of two deputy managing editors the summer before the newspaper’s launch in September 1982.
He became managing editor of Money in 1985, and initiated coverage of hard business stories, which helped drive the nationally distributed paper to respectability and then major-league status. Those editorial efforts also finally drew attention from a previously elusive audience — many of the nation’s top CEOs and boardroom types.
He started as a reporter at Gannett’s evening newspaper in Rochester, N.Y. He became an editor in 1978. In September 1980, he left Rochester to attend the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, where he received his MBA in 1982.
Ritter is a 1974 graduate of the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas.
UPDATE: AP story on Ritter’s appointment is now out here.
