New editorial page editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Ganey, Terry

ST. LOUIS -- Tod Robberson, a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial writer for the Dallas Morning News, will become the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial page editor shortly after the first of the year.

Post-Dispatch Editor Gilbert Bailon said Robberson would succeed Tony Messenger, the editorial page editor who moved into a columnist position a few months ago. In Messenger's absence, the Post-Dispatch has been using a freelance editorial service.

"We will go back to having three writers," Bailon said. "This has been a temporary situation when Tony moved to being a columnist. We want to write our own editorials. That's ideally what the situation would be."

In 2010, Robberson was one of three Dallas Morning News editorial writers who were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for "their relentless editorials deploring the stark social and economic disparity between the city's better-off northern and distressed southern half," according to the Pulitzer Prize website.

That same year, Post-Dispatch editorial writer John Carlton was a nominated finalist for editorials on health care reform. Carlton has since left the newspaper.

Robberson, 58, has been on the Dallas newspaper's editorial staff since 2006. He has experience as a foreign correspondent for that newspaper as well as the Washington Post and the Reuters wire service. He has a bachelor's degree in communications and journalism from Texas Tech University and a master's in Arab Studies from Georgetown University.