USA Today names Joanne Lipman as new top editor

NEW YORK (AP) - Gannett has named Joanne Lipman as the editor-in-chief of USA Today, one of the country's biggest newspapers.

Lipman has been with McLean, Virginia-based Gannett Co. since December 2015 and will keep her chief content officer position.

A former Wall Street Journal reporter and editor, she founded a Conde Nast business magazine, Portfolio, to much fanfare in 2007, shortly before the financial crisis. The magazine folded two years later.

Patty Michalski, who had been USA Today's acting editor-in-chief, will now focus on digital efforts for USA Today and Gannett's other papers. She reports to Lipman.

Gannett also owns newspapers such as the Arizona Republic, Detroit Free Press and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Gannett spokeswoman Amber Allman said that Lipman was the first woman to be USA Today's permanent editor-in-chief. But Karen Jurgensen was named the newspaper's top editor in 1999. She resigned in 2004 after a fabrication scandal involving a star reporter at the time.

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This story has been corrected to note that that Joanne Lipman was not the first female top editor at USA Today.