Business News

A. H. Belo Corporation Announces Director Changes

Friday 11. March 2011 - A. H. Belo Corporation (NYSE: AHC) today announced that Laurence E. Hirsch, a Class II Director since December 2007 and chairman of Eagle Materials, Inc. and Highlander Partners, L.P., will retire at the Company’s 2011 Annual Meeting on May 18.

The Company also announced that Louis E. Caldera, vice president/Programs at the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, has been elected a director by the Company’s Board of Directors and appointed to serve on each of the Board’s standing committees. Caldera will stand for re-election as a Class II Director at the Annual Meeting.
Hirsch joined Belo Corp.’s Board of Directors in August 1999 and subsequently became a director of A. H. Belo Corporation when Belo Corp. spun off its newspapers in February 2008. Between 1985 and 2004, Hirsch served Centex Corporation in various roles, including 16 years as chief executive officer. He currently is chairman of the Center for European Policy Analysis, a director of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), and a member of the Board of Advisors at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.
Hirsch said, “It has been an honor to serve A. H. Belo, its shareholders, its employees, and the communities of Dallas, Providence and Riverside. I’m confident that A. H. Belo’s unwavering commitment to journalism and its strong balance sheet will enable the Company to address successfully the secular challenges facing all traditional media companies.”
Robert W. Decherd, chairman, president and Chief Executive Officer of A. H. Belo Corporation, said, “Larry Hirsch’s exceptional business sense and foresight, together with his instinctive concern for our community, made him one of our Company’s most influential directors during a critical transitional period. We will miss Larry’s counsel.”
Caldera joined the Belo Corp. Board of Directors in 2001 and, like Hirsch, was an original director of A. H. Belo in 2008. He has more than 30 years of private and public sector experience. Caldera left the A. H. Belo Board in 2009 following his appointment by President Obama as assistant to the President and director of the White House Military Office. Prior to this appointment, Caldera served as a tenured professor at the University of New Mexico Law School and president of the University of New Mexico. A graduate of West Point and Harvard Law School, Caldera was Secretary of the Army in the Clinton administration. He is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has served as a director of Southwest Airlines and on the boards of trustees of Claremont McKenna College and the National World War II Museum.
Caldera said, “I’m very glad to re-join A. H. Belo’s Board and look forward to contributing to the Company’s progress as the economic recovery takes hold.”
Decherd said, “The Company’s directors look forward to re-engaging Louis in the strategies and related initiatives that will determine the future shape of journalism in Dallas, Providence and Riverside. Louis’ experience on the Board during the 2000s enables him to make an immediate impact in these deliberations.”