Susan Ellerbach didn’t have to think twice. As far back as she could remember, a journalist was all she’d wanted to be.
But while choosing the subject for her eighth-grade “career notebook” project was easy, she still needed to do an interview for it.
And the one she was able to score — at a weekly suburban Kansas City newspaper — continues to stick in her mind.
She interviewed a female editor there, Ellerbach recalls, and “she never mentioned that there were few women editors anywhere at the time.”
“She was one, so I knew I could be one.”
What Ellerbach didn’t know then was just how far her dream career would take her.
On Nov. 3, Ellerbach — managing editor of the Tulsa World since 1995 — became the company’s new executive editor, making her the first woman to ever lead the World’s newsroom.
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She succeeds Joe Worley, who retired from the post after 19 years. Worley remains a part-time staff writer and consultant.
Replacing Ellerbach as managing editor is Mike Strain, who moved up from news editor.
While Ellerbach appreciates the significance of the “first woman” distinction — she was also the first to be World managing editor — she does chafe at it a little, she admits.
“I have a hard time realizing that it’s something special,” she said last week. “My first instinct is to ask, ‘When is it going to stop being a big deal when a woman accomplishes something?’”
The World, she notes, has had a tradition of strong female journalists, something that’s been clear to her from the time she first came in for an interview in 1985 and met then-associate editor Pat Atkinson.
“If anything,” Ellerbach adds, “I’m surprised I’m the first because of all the talented women who came before me. I guess that makes it even more of an honor for me.”
Ellerbach, a graduate of the University of Kansas, joined the Tulsa World in 1985 as a business reporter. She had worked previously for several small newspapers in Kansas and Oklahoma.
Covering both the real estate and energy beats for the World, she would be named business editor in 1988.
Two years later, she became the World’s state editor, supervising the World’s Capitol and Washington bureaus, as well as statewide coverage for the paper. She was named Sunday editor in 1994.
Not one of those advances, much less the most recent promotion to which they led, would have happened, though, without the support along the way of her superiors, Ellerbach says.
“I wouldn’t be in this position without Joe Worley and (former publishers) Bob Lorton and Bobby Lorton, three men that made this possible for me.”
And though she hasn’t worked with him as long, she already considers Strain to be similarly influential.
“He’s one of the smartest, hardest-working journalists I’ve ever met. I knew it the first day he came to interview here. He gets things done. I’m fortunate to be starting this adventure with him.”
That adventure, she affirms, comes at a challenging time for the industry.
“A lot of people have asked me if this is something I really want to do: They tell me that newspapers are dying,” Ellerbach says.
But those death rumors, she says, are greatly exaggerated — just as they have been every time they’ve occurred, going back to the time of radio.
“Evolving,” she adds, is the better word; newspapers are in the process of becoming total news organizations — media companies that are better prepared to meet all the ways people like to get their news.
“Last month, our journalists produced 177 videos that were viewed over 265,000 times,” Ellerbach said. “That is an amazing number when you consider that this time last year we only had 11,000 views on our videos online.”
The business is changing, she added, “and we’re changing with it. I’m proud of that.”
To that end, World Publisher Bill Masterson said, one of Ellerbach’s first tasks is to continue leading the ongoing reorganization of the Tulsa World newsroom, which began this summer and is intended to strengthen the World’s position as a digital and print media company.
Ellerbach is the right person for the job, he added, and with Strain, she has a capable teammate to help carry it out.
“I’m really looking forward to the changes and transformation of our newsroom under Susan’s and Mike’s leadership,” Masterson said.
Strain, who began his career in Shawnee before joining The Oklahoman’s sports staff in 1990, joined the World in 2005 as sports editor.
He was named the World’s news editor in 2011 and has supervised all reporters and editors since then.
All this talk of change can be misleading, though, Ellerbach said:
“The basic task of reporting the news in an unbiased, factual, ethical manner ... presenting interesting features about what’s going on in our community” — those things will never change, she said.
“I’m very excited about our future as a newsroom and as an organization,” she said.
