The Philadelphia Inquirer’s top brass succeeded in wooing Amanda Bennett ’75 to become the paper’s first female editor Monday.

The announcement concludes an intense month-long search, in which Bennett was the only serious contender, insiders said.

Although she did not apply for the position, Inquirer publisher Robert J. Hall courted her single-mindedly almost from the outset, according to Inquirer Managing Editor Anne Gordon.

“I think she was the sole candidate,” Gordon said. “She was someone that our publisher Bob Hall identified from the beginning and very enthusiastically pursued.”

Bennett, who is also a Crimson editor, will depart her position as editor of Kentucky’s Lexington Herald-Leader—owned by media giant Knight-Ridder, which also owns the Inquirer—to assume her new post on June 23. She has been part of two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting teams.

Bennett will replace Walker Lundy, 60, who has held the paper’s top job for just 18 months. Lundy’s decision to step down last month after a relatively short tenure came as a surprise to the Inquirer staff.

Inquirer staffers say they hope Bennett will bring strong leadership to a paper that has seen four editors in the last 13 years, after former editor Gene Roberts led them to 17 Pulitzer Prizes during an 18-year reign that ended in 1990.

“We’re very hopeful that Amanda Bennett will bring some much-needed stability to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s top leadership,” Gordon said.

Bennett’s arrival at the Inquirer comes on the heels of a round of sweeping changes at the paper.

Under Lundy, the Inquirer refocused its coverage on local news content. The paper also recently eliminated its weekend magazine due to financial concerns.

With the paper coming off a period of “awful upheaval,” Bennett may have arrived at a perfect time, according to current colleague Joel Pett, an editorial cartoonist.

“There’s a lot of rancor...on the staff,” he said. “There may be nowhere to go but up.”

Bennett was introduced to the Inquirer staff at a June 2 meeting, and Gordon said she was “well received.”

According to an Inquirer article yesterday, Bennett has indicated that there are no more major changes in the pipeline.

Bennett, who worked at the Wall Street Journal for 23 years, served on a team there that won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for stories about U.S. AIDS policy.