By Matt Lundy
Joe Ruscitti doesn’t pretend to know where the newspaper industry is headed. He doesn’t know what new technology will change the way news is conveyed to readers of the London Free Press, where he’s the editor-in-chief.
But he is sure of two things: more than ever people have a healthy appetite for information and his newspaper will be there to unearth those important and engaging stories.
“Like any newspaper, this newspaper has been through many changes and has through it all kept alive a spirit of doing good journalism and good city journalism,” Ruscitti says. "Ultimately for me – despite the fact that no doubt I once wanted to be a great foreign correspondent or Toronto Maple Leafs beat reporter – the real nut of journalism is city journalism.”
Ruscitti says that city newspapers, more than national newspapers, have an intimate connection with their community. And he understands the impact of the Free Press in southwestern Ontario. Ruscitti has worked nearly every editorial position in the newsroom over his career – everything “short of delivering the mail,” he says, chuckling.
After Ruscitti graduated in 1988 from Western’s journalism program, he harassed an LFP editor for a position on the business desk and landed it. His journey to editor-in-chief involved stints as the night reporter, crime reporter, copy editor, page designer, Chatham bureau reporter and city editor, among several others. Ruscitti has spent nearly his entire career at the Free Press, with the exception of an eight-month stint with the Globe and Mail, where he was an assistant national editor.
But when Paul Berton, the former editor-in-chief of the Free Press, called Ruscitti and asked him to be his managing editor, he couldn’t refuse the offer and left the Globe. “I couldn’t imagine being asked to be a managing editor at a newspaper very many times,” says Ruscitti, “and it didn’t seem very smart to turn down the chance.” When Berton left the newspaper in 2010, Ruscitti took the reins as editor-in-chief.
The spirit of the Free Press newsroom and its ability to innovate, he says, is what’s kept him in London for more than two decades. “It’s not for nothing that we were one of the first newspapers in the country to live stream a press conference,” says Ruscitti, “or were one of the first newspapers to run a Twitter stream of a courtroom, during the Bandidos biker murders.”
But no matter how news is conveyed to his readers, Ruscitti says his paper’s mandate is simple: “We have a set of readers – they want to learn stuff and hear about stuff from us. Our job is to go get it.”
Back to gallery