Veteran Inky Editor Stan Wischnowski Promoted to IGM’s Vice President of News Operations

To lead Inky, Daily News, and Philly.com newsrooms in planning, budgets, and staffing.

Stan Wischnowski, a veteran Inquirer editor who sometimes has held the newspaper’s top spot during Bill Marimow‘s occasional firings, is getting a promotion: He’ll be the newly created vice president of news operations at Interstate General Media, overseeing the strategic planning, budgeting, and staffing at the Inky, Daily News, and Philly.com.

The announcement was made Tuesday night by Gerry Lenfest, IGM’s owner and the interim publisher of the papers. Wischnowski will report directly to Lenfest in his new role.

“Stan will see that each of our iconic brands will continue to evolve in meeting the needs of readers, while always providing an exceptional platform for our valued advertisers,” Lenfest said in a press release.

“My primary goal is to inject a stronger sense of urgency in everything we do, develop a stronger spirit of innovation and collaboration, and ensure that all three newsrooms maintain their distinctive identities,” Wischnowski said in the same press release.

Wischnowski has — perhaps as much as anybody at the papers — been buffeted by the drama and frequent ownership turnover at the Inquirer in recent years: Until Tuesday’s promotion, he had been serving as the Inquirer’s executive editor since May 2012. Before that, he was the paper’s top editor for about a year-and-a-half, ascending when Marimow was fired in 2010 by then-Publisher Greg Osberg, who served under the hedge fund owners that brought the papers out of bankruptcy (filed by previous owner Brian Tierney) in 2010. (It was during that tenure that the Inquirer published its Pulitzer-winning series of stories about safety in Philly public schools.) He stepped down to his current position when Marimow was brought back to the paper by the Inky’s next owners, led by George Norcross. Now Lenfest’s purchase of the papers has brought about another job change.

“His leadership in the Inquirer newsroom and throughout our company has been invaluable,” Marimow said in the release.

Wischnowski lives in Doylestown with his wife. The couple has three children.