John Temple
John Temple has been an editor responsible for coverage of local news since 1988, when he became city editor of The Albuquerque Tribune. Before moving to Honolulu to become editor of Civil Beat, his most recent position was editor, president and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver.
As editor, John led the Rocky to four Pulitzer Prizes and numerous other national awards from 1998 to 2009, when the paper closed. John has previous experience with Web startups. He launched two new online services in Denver, in addition to overseeing the paper’s main Web site and its special high school sports site, RockyPreps.com. The first was YourHub.com, an early experiment in “citizen journalism” that is still operating today. When it was launched in 2005, it was the largest such hyper-local initiative in the United States. It included more than 40 community Web sites and 18 weekly print sections featuring a selection of stories and photographs from the Web sites. He also started RedBlueAmerica.com, a national political/cultural site, for the E.W. Scripps Co., which owned the Rocky. That experiment, focused on building a civil environment where users could engage with thinking dramatically different from their own, was closed shortly after launch in 2008 when the gravity of the economic decline became apparent.
Before becoming an editor, John worked as a reporter at The Albuquerque Tribune and Toronto Star, covering politics, government, urban affairs, special projects and the environment. He served as city editor and managing editor of The Tribune before moving to Denver in 1992. He was the Rocky’s metro editor and managing editor before taking the paper’s top reins in 1998. In 2006, John was named vice president/news of Scripps’ newspaper division. In that role he advised editors and publishers on print and online content, strategy and personnel issues. John is a member of the board of the American Society of News Editors.
John grew up in Vancouver, B.C., and is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He lives in Honolulu with his wife, Judith, a ceramic sculptor. They have three children.
You can follow John on Twitter at @jtempleCB.
