Posted May. 7, 2008
Alfred S. Larkin Jr., executive vice president of The Boston Globe, announced his retirement yesterday, capping a 36-year career during which he held top positions in the newsroom and on the business side of the Globe.
"It just feels like the right time," said Larkin, 60, a native of Boston who lives in Milton. He added jokingly: "I've been wearing a rut in the road to the Globe from Milton. I thought I'd go off and see if I could find a new route to somewhere else."
Globe publisher P. Steven Ainsley said yesterday that Larkin has been an invaluable source of institutional and community knowledge since Ainsley was named publisher two years ago. He said he told Larkin: "My real wish would have been that [you] be here one day longer than I'm here." Ainsley said that "in the near term" Larkin will not be replaced; his duties will be divided among several Globe executives.
Larkin's departure will add to a generational turnover at the Globe that includes the departures last month of executive editor Helen Donovan and of deputy managing editor Michael J. Larkin, Larkin's brother.
Larkin's retirement, effective June 30, will bring to a close one of the more varied careers in Boston journalism. He joined the Globe in 1972 as a police reporter. In the mid-1970s he became one of the Globe editors who supervised the paper's Pulitzer-winning coverage of the court-ordered desegregation of the Boston public schools.
Then, after a stint as a Nieman fellow at Harvard, it was back to reporting. Larkin worked in the Globe's State House bureau, then joined the City Hall bureau. In 1981 he was named editor of the Globe Sunday Magazine and a year later assumed the post of metropolitan editor, which Larkin described yesterday as his favorite job. "You're at the center of the action," he said.
After four years as metro editor, he was named deputy managing editor, then Sunday managing editor, and finally managing editor for administration in 1990. By 1998, ready for a new challenge, Larkin moved to the business side. He served stints as vice president and assistant to the publisher and as vice president of human resources before being named executive vice president two years ago. Larkin said one of the things that gratified him most was the chance to "have two entirely different careers in the same organization."
When he leaves the Globe next month, Larkin will follow in the footsteps not just of his brother but also of his wife, former travel editor Wendy Fox, who left the Globe in 2005 after a 24-year career.
