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[[header]] SUNDAY, APRIL 30, 1978 The Atlanta Journal and CONSTITUTION 11-B

Journalism Veteran Paul Miller Quits AP Board

Paul Miller, the only former Associated Press employee to become president and later chairman of the news cooperative, is leaving the AP board he joined 28 years ago.

Miller's three-year term on the board is expiring, and he is not seeking re-election at the AP annual meeting in Atlanta Monday. He will remain an ex-officio participant in board deliberations by virtue of his status as a former chairman.

Miller, 71 and chairman of the board of Gannett Co. Inc., was succeeded as AP chairman last April by Jack W.Tarver, publisher of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution.

He was described at the time by Sen. Henry F. Byrd of Virginia as "somewhat unique, in that he is simultaneously a top-notch newsman, an excellent businessman, a superb executive - and with it all, an individual of the highest integrity."

Reflecting on his association with the AP, which began in 1932 in Columbus, Ohio, Miller said, "I never had an AP job I didn't like or lived any place I didn't like." He noted that during his years as head of the news service, the AP won 10 Pulitzer Prizes, including prizes for coverage of the Vietnam War, established the Special Assignment Team to do investigative reporting, pioneered electronic editing and introduced the high-speed delivery of news.

Born in Diamond, Mo., on Sept. 28, 1906, the son of a clergyman, Miller began his newspaper career at the age of 16 when he won a national high school editorial writing contest.

"Inflated by that triumph," he recalled, "I hung around the Pawhuska (Okla.) Daily Journal Captial until they gave me a job. The next year I was a reporter, and before I went away to college at 18, I had already served briefly as the city editor."

Miller attended Oklahoma A&M, now Oklahoma State University, and the University of Oklahoma. He left college at the age of 20 to become editor of the Okemah (Okla.) Daily Leader, but later returned to Oklahoma State University, from which he was graduated in 1932. In 1976, an enlarged and expanded school was named the Paul miller Journalism and Broadcasting Building.

Miller was hired as a rewrite man for the AP the same year he graduated, and it was in Columbus that he met his wife, Louise Johnson, the women's editor of the Ohio State Journal. They have three sons — two in the newspaper business — and a daughter, and celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary last October.

Miller's career with the AP spanned 15 years, during which, after Columbus, he served progressively as overnight New York cable desk editor, night New York general desk editor, news editor at Kansas City, Mo., chief of the Salt Lake City bureau in charge of Utah and Idaho service, chief of the Philadelphia bureau in charge of Pennsylvania and Delaware, executive assistant to the general manager in New York, chief of the Washington bureau during World War II and also assistant general manager of the AP.

He left the AP in 1947 to join the executive staff of Gannett Newspapers at Rochester, N.Y. Within a few years he became executive vice president of Gannett and publisher of the Rochester Gannett Newspapers. Architect of Gannett's acquisition program, Miller was elected president and chief executive of Gannett in 1957, chairman and chief executive in 1970 and has been chairman of the board since 1973. He was succeeded as president and chief executive by Allen H. Neuharth, whom Miller had selected to be president and chief operating officer in 1970. Miller continues to head the Gannett acquisition program.

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PAUL MILLER