His first job was at the city desk of the Buffalo Evening News. Subsequently, he served in national news and politics capacities at the same paper and at the Washington Star, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Boston Globe. In 2002, he was hired as executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he remained for 16 years. He had planned on retiring the next year, but the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooting caused him to leave earlier; he made the globally-recognized decision to publish a front-page, full-width headline, in Hebrew-Aramaic, of the opening of the Jewish mourner's prayer the Friday following the massacre.