The CBC has hired the publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times to replace Tony Burman, and will install John Cruickshank atop its news division within three weeks, the network announced on Wednesday.

Cruickshank -- a veteran of newspapers the Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail and the Montreal Gazette -- has been at the storied Chicago paper since 2000 and is also COO of the Sun-Times Media Group, which holds some 100 papers in the Chicago area. At the Ceeb, he will report to television EVP Richard Stursberg and radio VP Jane Chalmers.

Cruickshank "has a distinguished career as a journalist, first in Canada and most recently in the United States," said Stursberg in a statement.

He is credited with steering the paper through a circulation scandal shortly after his appointment as publisher in 2003, a position he assumed upon the departure of David Radler, who resigned amid the fraud scandal that enveloped himself and Conrad Black, then the chairman of parent company Hollinger International.

Burman's old job has been split in two, and Cruickshank will reportedly name an editor-in-chief to handle the day-to-day operations of CBC News following his arrival in Toronto.