William Sutton, Jr.

William W. Sutton, Jr.
Deputy Managing Editor, The News and Observer

Mr. Sutton’s duties at the newspaper include supervising the news copy desk and the graphics, features design, news design and photography departments. In addition, he recruits for The N&O and helps recruit for The N&O's parent company, The McClatchy Company Inc. In 1999, he was elected president of the National Association of Black Journalists. NABJ's mission is to increase diversity in the media industry, get more African Americans into management and to monitor coverage of African Americans.

Mr. Sutton is a graduate of Hampton Institute, now University, briefly attended law school at Rutgers University-Camden and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. During two summer college breaks, he worked at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, in the mailroom and in the newsroom. He spent his senior year in college as a reporter at the Virginian Pilot in Norfolk, Va.

After three years at Gannett's Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, N.J., Mr. Sutton spent more than 10 years with The Philadelphia Inquirer in various reporting and editing jobs. He became managing editor of the Post-Tribune in Gary, Ind., in 1991. Within a year, he changed his title to Newsroom Manager as part of an overall refocusing in the newsroom to bring more emphasis to the newsroom management and the need for urgent change. In 1993, he became editor and vice president of the Post-Tribune.

He joined the staff at the N&O in January 1997 as an assistant managing editor responsible for recruiting and community outreach. He became deputy managing editor in December 1997.

Mr. Sutton has been an active NABJ member since 1977 and, along with Juan Gonzalez of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, provided the impetus to encourage the four media organizations of journalists of color -– NABJ, NAHJ, Asian American Journalists Association and Native American Journalists Association -– to form closer relationships and to consider a joint convention. The first Unity convention was held in 1994.

Mr. Sutton was a member of the board of the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland for two years before joining UM's College of Journalism Board of Visitors.

Mr. Sutton was a 1996-97 Newspaper Association of America New Media Fellow, learning the basics of HTML and how to better bring diverse voices to new media as newspapers go into the brave new media world. In 1996,he received the Maynard Institute's Diversity Award.