Randy Parker named executive editor of the York Daily Record
Mike ArgentoIn 1999, Randy Parker, then a 10-year veteran of the York Daily Record, left York for what he believed was a greener pasture, accepting an assistant city editor position at the Dallas Morning News.
It lasted less than a year.
“The whole time I was there, it felt like I was working at somebody else’s newspaper in somebody else’s town,” he said.
He missed York. And he missed the York Daily Record. Before the end of 1999, he was back in York, working as the Daily Record’s news editor, running the copy desk. The Daily Record, he believed then, and still believes now, was a special place.
He had always wanted to work for the Daily Record. While still in college, he worked summers as a correspondent, a part-time free-lancer, covering municipal government and school board meetings. After graduating from Temple University, where he was editor of the Ambler campus paper, he applied for a reporting job at the Daily Record, only to be beat out by another applicant from the Baltimore Sun, a man who now works as an editor at the New York Times.
The Daily Record was home to him.
And now, he is set to ascend to the top position in the newsroom, taking over for Jim McClure, who will retire on April 1.
He will be the executive editor of the York Daily Record/Sunday News. And as Pennsylvania state editor of the USA Today Network, he will oversee editorial operations at the newsrooms in Lebanon, Chambersburg and Hanover.
“Everything I’ve done in the last 35 years has led to this moment,” Parker said. “I’ve been preparing myself for this job for the longest time. I’m as on fire for what we’re doing here as I’ve ever been.”
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Except for that brief detour to Texas, Parker has spent his entire career at the Daily Record, sticking with the paper through thick and thin, part of a management team that has created a news organization that’s successfully transitioned to the digital world and that routinely wins accolades and awards from its peers.
He grew up all over the country, as his father served in the Air Force. He moved to York County in the middle of his junior year of high school, graduating in 1984 from Dallastown Area High School.
He wanted to be a reporter, and he got to be one, though by a circuitous route. He joined the Daily Record as a copy editor in January 1989, after being turned down for the reporting job.
“You could see, 30 years ago, great promise in his leadership and journalism skills,” McClure said. “It wasn’t long before we gave him different challenges.”
Parker had worked his way to becoming the assistant news editor, working with the news editor to manage the copy desk, an old newspaper term for the people who edited stories, wrote headlines and laid out pages.
But he wanted to be on the streets, and when the position of police reporter opened up, he applied for it, and got it.
The reporting experience had a profound impact on him. “You get to be next to people at the most important moments in their lives, whether it was the family of somebody who had been murdered or a person accused of a crime,” he said. “It’s an amazing honor sharing those moments with people.”
Among the stories he worked on was a series of pieces about the homeless population in York. He spent weeks on the streets, talking to the homeless and living among them, once staying in a homeless shelter for a week. “That had a lifelong impact,” he said.
From reporting, he was named the paper’s news editor, running the copy desk and then city editor. Then, after his brief stint in Dallas, he returned to the Daily Record as news editor and in 2004, was elevated to managing editor. More recently, as the newsroom has changed, he has served as news director, working more directly with reporters on day-to-day journalism and heading up the paper’s investigative efforts.
And on April 1, he will become editor.
He balks at the phrase “dream job” and probably for good reason. It may be the culmination of his career at the Daily Record, but it also comes with serious challenges. The news business has rapidly changed in the past decade, at least, and is facing tough financial times.
Parker believes it may be helpful that he has worked at the Daily Record for the past three decades, 30 years marked by change and evolving ownership, from a small, privately held chain to the now management of Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain.
He believes that has prepared him and gives him insight as the newsroom tries to navigate journalism’s roiling seas.
“In the last 15 years,” McClure said, “he has been a part of everything we’ve done.”
Those 15 years include winning numerous awards, including Newspaper of the Year from the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association four times and, an indication of how things have changed in the business, two Emmys.
Hollis Towns, Gannett’s northeast region group editor and executive editor of the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey, said, “I’m really looking forward to Randy’s leadership. He’s done a magnificent job with Jim...and we expect nothing but continued excellence.”
McClure said, “He’s really more than ready. He has the journalism chops, the interest in the community, and he can articulate and communicate strategy wonderfully. He has a tremendously big heart for the community.”
People who have worked with Parker can attest to that. He often becomes so passionate about people and their stories that he is moved to tears – the antithesis of the stereotypical hard-bitten, cynical journalist.
“Clearly, this is where I want to be,” he said. “My trip to Dallas clarified it. This is where my heart is."
Parker, 53, lives in York Township with his wife, Jeanie. His two children, Nick, 19, and Caitlyn, 20, are both in college – Nick, a freshman at Coastal Carolina, where he plays on the baseball team, and Caitlyn at West Virginia, where she's a biology major studying genetics.