Christy C. Bulkeley, 67, one of the few female newspaper publishers in the United States in the 1970s, who later helped update landmark research about women in journalism, died of ovarian cancer Sept. 13 at the University of North Carolina Women's Hospital in Raleigh, N.C. Ms. Bulkeley, a vice president at the Gannett Foundation in Washington from 1985 to 1992, was the first woman named a chief executive officer of a Gannett-owned newspaper. After Ms. Bulkeley left Gannett, she received a master's degree in theological studies from Washington's Wesley Theological Seminary in 1994. "Christy's long list of firsts in journalism and community advocacy were achieved because of her intelligence, her savvy and her gumption," said Sheila Gibbons, editor of the Media Report to Women newsletter. "Her success as a pioneering female executive at one of the nation's largest media companies nurtured the career aspirations of many other women." She was born in Galesburg, Ill., and graduated from the University of Missouri. She spent her career in Gannett newspapers, working in New York at the Rochester Times-Union and the Saratoga Springs Saratogian, where she became editor, publisher and president. Gannett executive Al Neuharth promoted her, at age 34, to chief executive officer of the Danville (Ill.) Commercial-News in 1976, and she simultaneously was vice president of the newspaper chain's central U.S. newspapers. "She was an outstanding journalist and executive, and she had a remarkable ability to work with males and females," Neuharth, the founder of USA Today and the Freedom Forum, said Wednesday in an interview. "At that time, we at Gannett had only white males as publishers, and she presented the first opportunity to change that pattern." Gannett later became known for promoting women and minorities, "but if she had not done as well as she did, that pattern might have continued," he said. In spring 2002, Ms. Bulkeley published a research study in Nieman Reports that updated benchmark studies of women working in the mainstream media. Ms. Bulkeley was a Pulitzer Prize nominating judge and a 1978 winner of the national Headliner Award from what is now the Association for Women in Communications. Her husband of 33 years, David Finks, died in June. Survivors include two brothers. Patricia Sullivan

Service: 11/10/2009
Contributor: sandi (grimm) enright (47171112)