Jerome Merle Ceppos (October 14, 1946 – July 29, 2022) was an American journalist, news executive, and educator.
He is recognized as the former top editor of San Jose Mercury News and the Dean of the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University. With 50 years of experience as a journalist, he was awarded with a recognition from the Society of Professional Journalists for his consistently high ethical standards.
Early life
Ceppos was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland. He attended Northwood High School where he edited The Red and Black school newspaper. At the University of Maryland he edited The Diamondback and graduated in 1969 with a BA in journalism. He joined SDX, now the Society of Professional Journalists, and was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa, men's leadership society.
Career
Gannett
Ceppos's first full-time professional position was at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, where he was reporter, assistant city editor, and night city editor between 1969 and 1972.
Knight-Ridder
In 1972 he moved to the Miami Herald, where he was assistant city editor, their first national foreign editor, and assistant managing editor for news before moving to the San Jose Mercury News in 1981. There he was associate editor, managing editor, senior vice president and executive editor. While managing editor, the newspaper won two Pulitzer Prizes. He also initiated a Vietnamese edition Viet Mercury and a Spanish edition Nuevo Mundo. He supported digital initiatives at a print journalism company and successfully championed diversity hiring. In 1999 he became vice president for News of Knight-Ridder, then the second largest newspaper chain in the United States. He left the position in 2005.
University of Nevada – Reno
From 2008 to 2011, he was dean and professor at the Reynolds School in Journalism at the University of Nevada-Reno, holding the Fred W. Smith Chair in Journalism. As incoming dean, he commissioned a large banner with the words of the First Amendment to hang in the school. He continued his professional goals by increasing diversity hiring and changing the curriculum to require cross-platform training for all students.
Louisiana State University
In July 2011 he became dean and William B. Dickinson Distinguished Professor at the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University. He repeated his display of the First Amendment and moved the curriculum toward online media. He taught media ethics. He stepped down as dean at the end of the 2017–2018 academic year. He continued to teach "Media Writing," "Media Management," and "Media Ethics and Social Responsibility." He died at his home in Baton Rouge on July 29, 2022. "
Other work
Ceppos was consultant with Leading Edge Associates, a management consulting firm in San Jose from 2006 to 2009. In 2007 he was Fellow in media ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
Controversies
Dark alliance
Gary Webb was a reporter for The Mercury News. Hired in 1987, his year-long investigation of cocaine dealing in Los Angeles was published in The Mercury News in three parts, from August 18–20, 1996 as "Dark Alliance." Jerry Ceppos was executive editor of the newspaper. Plaudits for the story were followed by criticism from major media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. After initially defending the story, Ceppos commissioned an internal review. At the end of March 1997, Ceppos told Webb that he was going to present the internal review findings in a column. After discussions with Webb, the column was published on May 11, 1997.