Longtime journalist Bill Church will be new executive editor of N&O and Herald-Sun
Bill Church, who started his newspaper career covering high school sports for an Oklahoma weekly and most recently helped oversee 150 newsrooms across the nation, will be the new executive editor of The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun.
Robyn Tomlin, vice president of local news for McClatchy, announced Church’s hire Friday.
“His unique mix of skills, experience and talents make him the perfect person to take the lead of these news organizations at this moment of growth and opportunity in our newsroom and community,” said Tomlin, who served as the N&O’s executive editor as well as Southeast regional editor for McClatchy before her recent promotion.
Church is a Japanese-American, born on an Air Force base in Japan while his father was serving overseas. He will be the first person of color to serve in the newsroom’s top leadership role in The News & Observer’s 156-year history.
In town for a quick introduction to staff and a few hours of house hunting, Church said he is excited to join the N&O and Herald-Sun, which recently have been hiring newsroom staff and making plans for new beats and projects.
He said he has been reading the paper daily and is especially impressed with investigative work and reporting that helps people connect to this place.
“I hope the focus will continue to be high-quality journalism that changes lives,” Church said, noting that he also likes to see stories that help us identify “who we are and what we believe in.”
Kristin Roberts, McClatchy’s senior vice president for news, said, “Bill is a true newsroom leader with a truly impressive track record of incubating talent. Throughout his career, his mentorship has spurred journalists to do great things.
“He has built news operations that serve colleagues and communities alike, and we are thrilled to have him join the McClatchy team.”
A boast leads to a job
Church launched his newspaper career in 1976, four months out of high school, when he boasted offhandedly to the publisher of the small weekly in Del City, Oklahoma, that he could write as well as anybody on staff.
Soon, he was filing reports on high school football games, a part-time job he kept while attending the University of Oklahoma, where he studied economics and developed an appreciation for analysis and opposing arguments. He later received a masters in administration from Central Michigan University.
While he figures he might have had a pleasant life as an economics professor, he developed a love for journalism, especially community journalism.
“As journalists, we have to recognize we live and work and play in this community,” Church said.
And it’s not enough to find stories that point out the problems, he said. “We have to also find solutions.”
After another sports reporting job, Church moved into editing, first in Oklahoma, then Wisconsin. He started as editor of a paper in Elmira, N.Y., two weeks after 9/11, when the paper was writing powerful local stories about the effects of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
A Pulitzer Prize and other awards
He worked for a time in Oregon, then went to Sarasota, Fla., in 2013.
Under his leadership, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting.
Church rose within Sarasota’s parent company, GateHouse Media to become the senior vice president for news. He oversaw the Austin, Texas-based Center for News and Design and was editor-in-chief of the Austin American-Statesman.
While working for GateHouse, he helped oversee 150 newsrooms, reorganizing them under a “team-based” audience model and launching award-winning innovation and investigations teams. The Associated Press Media Editors named GateHouse Media as its 2018 Innovator of the Year for digital storytelling initiative.
Church is a longtime member of the Asian American Journalists Association and is a recipient of the News Leaders Association’s Robert G. McGruder Award for Diversity Leadership.
After GateHouse merged with Gannett in 2019, Church took on the role of vice president of news and director of standards and staff development with Gannett until his departure last fall.
Church describes his management style as easy going but competitive and approachable.
A newsroom can’t rely on any one person, he said, including its leadership.
“It’s like being a conductor of a master philharmonic performance,” he said. The conductor may not be a virtuoso on any instrument, “but can lead the musicians to create evocative music.”
Church is the father of two grown children and a three-month-old granddaughter, who he said will be hard to leave in Austin when he and his wife, Darla, relocate to the Triangle.
He will report to Tomlin. He starts the new job Sept. 20.
“My happy place is being in a local newsroom,” Church said. “It’s the place where I have the chance to sit down with reporters and talk to them and also talk to people out in the community.”
This story was originally published September 10, 2021 at 9:35 AM.
