he Detroit News has fired editorial-page editor Tom Bray, who has overseen what is widely considered one of the best editorial pages in the country. Neither the News nor its parent company, Gannett, has announced the decision, but the move was made on Monday in a meeting between Bray and Mark Silverman, editor and publisher of the News.

Bray is still listed as running the editorial page in today's edition of the paper. Yet in a matter of days, sources say, it will turn over formally to Nolan Finley, who most recently has been the paper's deputy managing editor. A message on Finley's voice mail says he is out of the office until Monday. Bray and Silverman did not return NR's phone calls.

"Tom Bray was a voice of conservative reform before it became politically successful," says Paul Gigot, the Wall Street Journal's Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist. "He was a dissenting voice from liberal orthodoxy and an all too rare one among major city dailies."

Bray, who took over the page in 1983, is viewed by many as having provided the intellectual justification for much of what Republican governor John Engler has tried to accomplish, including tax cuts and welfare reform.

"Tom is an intellectual powerhouse in Michigan," says John Truscott, Engler's press secretary. "His influence on the state has been profound, from advocacy for limited government to promoting honest viewpoints on the issues. He is widely read by friend and foe alike. We in the Engler administration read him every day, even though he doesn't always agree with what we're doing. And he's assembled a great team, a top-notch staff of editorial writers."

Bray's page is also noted for questioning the excesses of the environmental movement. He discovered Warren Brookes, who, before his untimely death, wrote a nationally syndicated column for the page. Bray also was an early sponsor of Tony Snow.

Bray was scheduled to appear at the Competitive Enterprise Institute's annual Warren Brookes dinner tomorrow night in Washington, D.C., but he has cancelled.

"Tom Bray represents the ideal of journalistic integrity," says Fred Smith, president of CEI. "The elites do not tolerate intellectual diversity."