According to The Kansas City Star, Andale Gross, a longtime journalist who recently worked as the race and ethnicity news editor at The Associated Press, has been named The Kansas City Star’s next managing editor.
Gross, a native of Moberly, Missouri, earned a journalism degree at the University of Missouri and started in the industry in 1994, covering Olathe schools out of The Star’s Johnson County bureau.
Gross will become the first Black editor to hold the position of managing editor. He will be The Star’s second-highest-ranking editor and be in charge of day-to-day newsroom operations.
Gross worked as the AP’s race and ethnicity news editor for nearly four years, overseeing a team of reporters who cover race across the U.S. and world. They reported on spot news but also took a step back to do more “courageous” and meaningful work, he said.
After his first stint at The Star, which lasted until 1996, Gross worked at newspapers in Iowa and Ohio before coming back to Kansas City in 2006 as an AP reporter.
He then spent a decade as an AP editor on a regional desk that included overseeing coverage in Missouri and Kansas. During that time, he also traveled as a reporter and story planner to Ferguson, Missouri, after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown.
Gross worked as the AP’s race and ethnicity news editor for nearly four years, overseeing a team of reporters who cover race across the U.S. and world. They reported on spot news but also took a step back to do more “courageous” and meaningful work, he said.
More recently, Gross’ team produced a series of stories in May centered on how the legacy of racism “laid the foundation” for health inequities that Black Americans face today.