Ceppos was the former editor of the San Jose Mercury News[1] and the dean of the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University.
He faced outside criticism for his failure to defend colleague Gary Webb following the publication of "Dark Alliance," a series of investigative reports linking the CIA and the Contras to the U.S. crack epidemic.
He continued his professional goals by increasing diversity hiring and changing the curriculum to require cross-platform training for all students.
In July 2011, Ceppos became dean and William B. Dickinson Distinguished Professor at the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University.
Gary Webb, a reporter for The Mercury News hired in 1987 while Ceppos was executive editor, conducted a year-long investigation of cocaine dealing in Los Angeles, which was published in The Mercury News in three segments between August 18 and August 20, 1996, under the title "Dark Alliance.
[10] At the end of March 1997, Ceppos told Webb that he was going to publish the internal review findings in a column, which appeared on May 11, 1997.
Ceppos took personal responsibility for the series and its flaws in his opening sentence, writing, "Few things in life are harder than owning up to one's shortcomings, but I need to tell you about an important case in which I believe that we fell short of my standards for the Mercury News."
1) It presented only one interpretation of conflicting evidence and in one case "did not include information that contradicted a central assertion of the series."
Webb was found dead in his Carmichael, California home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head.
[citation needed] In August 1998 a financial story by Chris Schmitt was shared in its entirety with NASDAQ for fact-checking prior to publication.
This departure from standard journalism practice raised ethical questions regarding the relationship between journalists and the subjects they cover, who are not assumed to have control over the content of publication.