Kinney retires after 37 years with Ottaway Newspapers

CAMPBELL HALL, N.Y. – When John P. Kinney retires from Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. at the end of 2006, he will complete a 37-year journalism journey which took him from rookie reporter to senior corporate executive through four states and eight publications, ending only a few miles from where it began.

“John is leaving while still at the top of his game, having successfully executed every challenge thrown at him,” said John N. Wilcox, chairman and chief executive officer of Ottaway. “His wisdom, wit and work ethic are all legendary. He will be greatly missed and fondly remembered.”

Kinney, who has been senior vice president of Ottaway since the middle of 2002, started as a reporter for his hometown newspaper, the then Port Jervis Union-Gazette, in 1969 and was a capital bureau reporter, editor, general manager and publisher before coming to the corporate headquarters.

“It’s been my good fortune to spend 37 years working in a business, a calling really, that I am passionate about, and with people I admire and respect,” Kinney said. “It is time for me to move on and I do so with the certain knowledge that the company I have worked with almost my entire adult life is in very good hands and poised to meet the challenges transforming the media landscape today.”

As senior vice president, he has worked with newspaper publishers and corporate staff to establish and achieve strategic and financial goals and objectives for each local media division and for the company.

He and his wife, Janice, live in Montgomery. They have two adult children, Timothy of San Francisco and Kathryn of Queens.

He is a graduate of Port Jervis High School and while he may have lost a step over the years, he still holds scholastic records for the mile and half-mile track events at the school. He has an associate’s degree in English literature from Orange County Community College, attended Georgetown University and served in the U.S. Army.

After starting as a reporter, he became editor in Port Jervis and later moved to Albany as bureau chief for Ottaway News Service, reporting on state government for the company’s New York newspapers. He was editor of the Record-Eagle in Traverse City, MI., general manager of the Cape Cod Times in Hyannis, Mass., publisher of Rockingham County Newspapers (now Seacoast
Newspapers) in New Hampshire and assistant to the publisher at The Standard-Times in New Bedford, Mass.

Before returning to his native Orange County to work at corporate headquarters, he spent 12 years in Massachusetts as publisher at Essex County Newspapers which includes The Salem Evening News, the Daily News in Newburyport and the Gloucester Daily Times.

He is former president of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers' Association and past chair of two New England Newspaper Association committees - Advertising, Marketing and Promotion and Electronic Publishing. He has served in a volunteer capacity on numerous civic, charitable and not-for-profit boards, including president of the Seacoast, N.H. United Way and chairman of the North Shore (MA.) Chamber of Commerce.

For information, contact:

Ken Hall, Corporate Communications
845-346-3182