Michael Chihak, editor and publisher of the Tucson Citizen told his staff he will leave the newspaper as of July 3.

He will begin a new career as the executive director of the Communications Leadership Institute, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, according to the Citizen’s website.

Chihak became editor and publisher of the Citizen in 2000. It was the place he landed his first newspaper job as a senior at the University of Arizona.

After 10 years as a correspondent for the Associated Press, Chihak served as a reporter and desk editor at the Citizen. He moved on Gannett Co. Inc.'s USA Today in Washington, D.C., in 1984, where he worked for eight years. In 1992, Chihak moved back west, to Salinas, Calif., where he became executive editor of Gannett's The Californian. Two years later he was named president and publisher of Salinas Newspapers Inc., remaining there until returning to Tucson.

Chihak has been in the newspaper business for more than 38 years not counting his days as a paper delivery boy when he delivered the Citizen for two years in his neighborhood on the south side.

Gannett, which owns the Citizen, has not yet named a replacement for Chihak.