New editors bring excitement

I've been talking to my staff recently about viewing ourselves as a horizontal organization as opposed to a linear one. By that, I mean that we previously operated as five "vertical" silos — The Courier, The Advertiser-Tribune, Review Times, Sandusky Register and Norwalk Reflector. And within those silos, we have departments that have a common goal like advertising, editorial, circulation or press. Seeing that we're all together now, I want to take advantage of the good parts of this. Finding synergies across our locations and using our collective might to put together strong products and a strong presence are among our biggest goals. We want this to happen while retaining the individuality of each of our publications. In that light, we're in the middle of some changes in our editorial departments. Brenna Griteman, who well served The Courier as editor for the past two years, recently departed for another position in the community. Brenna was a standout since my time in Findlay, and helped bridge our paper through change. She will be missed. But moves like this means opportunity, and we are happy to bring Bret Nye over to be the new community editor in his hometown of Findlay. Since I've now been in northwest Ohio for over three years, I've worked with Bret every step along the way, first seeing him grow as a part-time reporter with The Advertiser-Tribune, then a full-time reporter, then an assistant editor, then the community editor of both the A-T and Review Times. Bret is a humble leader who was challenged within the last year at taking a deep dive at improving the editorial content of the A-T. Through working our design team, working with our reporters, and working with the community, The A-T is on the upswing. We look for him to continue to grow The Courier, specifically focusing on increasing local news coverage and our presence online. He's got a great team of veteran and solid journalists around him, along with editor Evan Hayes, who will work alongside Bret in developing our news content and finding efficient ways to get the most out of our team. Evan is thoughtful and talented and will form a great synergy with Bret. Bret leaving Tiffin has opened up the door for Nicole Walby to step in as community editor there. Nicole is a Tiffin person who has spent a handful of years working as a trusted reporter at The A-T. She recently took on more editor-like duties and has handled it well. She has the respect of her staff and is poised to make an impact in a community that is always interesting from a news coverage standpoint. You'll see her touch all over the upcoming Our Town publication, Tiffin's most important special publication of the year. They're added to a group of editors I trust and who make great impacts in their communities in Brandon Addeo in Sandusky and Joe Centers in Norwalk. Overseeing the group is executive editor Matt Westerhold, who is spending more time in all of our markets, working with our teams in building out news coverage and efficiently considering how we gather that news. Me, being an old editor myself, won't be far away, as while I have my hand in all aspects of my operation, I fell in love with newspapering because of news. But I don't have to have to be in too deep because we have a team eager to work together and be creative. We've all seen a lot of change in our world and business the past few years, but our editorial team is proud to continue to deliver you local news each and every day, whether it is in print or online. I recently traveled out of state and took a look at newspapers, many from communities larger than ours. While all newspapers have changed, many that I saw were vastly smaller than their previous iterations, devoid of much local news coverage. When I got back on Tuesday and saw the stack of papers from the previous week, I smiled. Hard news, community news, features and photos all flowed from front page to front page, each community paper displaying its local news. We're not perfect and always strive to get better. But we have a good team, and I'm excited to work with our new editorial leadership group. Speer is the publisher of The Courier, Findlay, The Advertiser-Tribune, Tiffin, Review Times, Fostoria, the Sandusky Register and the Norwalk Reflector. He can be reached at jeremyspeer@thecourier.com