Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1990s. Journal publisher culminates career with sale to Belo

For most people who rise to being publisher of a metropolitan newspaper, the occasion is one of joy, having reached the pinnacle of the profession.

But, for Stephen Hamblett, who became publisher of The Providence Journal on Sept. 25, 1987, it was a somber affair. Less than a week earlier, publisher Michael P. Metcalf had died of injuries suffered in a mysterious bicycling accident near his Westport, Mass., home. Hamblett had lost not only a business associate, but a close friend. Both Harvard graduates, they had met when Hamblett came to The Journal in 1957 as an advertising department clerk.

"I was just so shocked at the time. Initially, I felt overwhelmed," Hamblett said in a June 2004 interview. He shook off whatever doubts he had about stepping into Metcalf's shoes and led the paper through one of the most difficult transitions in its history. "I felt confident, given the quality of the staff, that we could do it."

The Journal was Hamblett's first job out of college.

He was born Oct. 30, 1934, in Nashua, N.H., one of four sons of Robert B. and Helen K. Hamblett. He was bitten by the newspaper bug when his father, a lawyer, while representing a shareholder of the Nashua, N.H., Telegraph, served, in effect, as the paper's president. Hamblett worked at the Telegraph summers while in school, and his duties including reporting.

After graduating from Harvard, he interviewed for jobs at several newspapers, picking The Journal because "I decided I wanted to latch onto a good New England newspaper."

Hamblett rose from advertising clerk at The Journal to assistant publisher, the title he held when Metcalf died. In a 42-year career, he witnessed decades of great change in the newspaper industry -- and was at the helm for 12 of the most tumultuous years in Journal history.

"During a period of rapid changes in the media business, we felt it important that the Journal Company, through acquisitions, become an even more diversified business. By doing so we were able, through good and bad economic times, to maintain the quality and unique character of The Providence Journal. Maintaining this quality while successfully taking the company public and merging it into Belo in what is an unusual relationship vis a vis autonomy of operations, was particularly satisfying," Hamblett said. "Specific satisfying moments from the standpoint of news operations? Promoting [executive editors James V.] Wyman and [Joel P.] Rawson. A feeling of immense pride when we won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994."