In any community in America, you’re going to find challenges, successes, divisiveness, collaboration and indifference. And one thing is certain – everybody has an opinion.
As the new Florida Times-Union opinion and engagement editor, I’m looking forward to hearing people out. Conversations can make people think about things from a different perspective. It’s really the only way to make meaningful change.
After a 30-year-career in local journalism primarily in Cleveland and Las Vegas, it’s a privilege to be here.
Local news is so important. Think about it, unless a story is so horrific or so wonderful and unusual that it merits national coverage, where else are you going to find news that matters most to you? Where else are you going to hear from people in nearby communities?
I’m grateful for my move to Florida from Ohio at this stage in my career. I’ve spent a lot of time in Florida in recent years, so It’s an opportunity to marry my professional life with my personal life. I’m thrilled about the opportunity to lead coverage for the opinion page. I look forward to engaging with the community in different ways, whether it’s through digital subscriptions, print, social media, a Facebook live event or eventually public events when things get back to normal following this worldwide pandemic that has forever changed our lives.
It’s a real responsibility to have this role in a city with no shortage of news, and I’m up for the challenge.
When the Times-Union top editor Mary Kelli Palka hired me, she said one thing that resonated with her is that while journalists have to cover all sorts of news, including tragedies and controversial topics, our weekly conversations led her to believe that I tend to look at things from a glass-half-full perspective.
Quite frankly, I never thought about that until she said it.
But now that I’ve put some thought to it, I’d say that a big part of my optimistic and solutions-oriented outlook is that I spent 10 years of my life interviewing nearly 500 small business owners in the Cleveland area for a column and a book about small business owners called, “My Biggest Mistake and How I Fixed It.”
I learned a lot from these humble entrepreneurs who shared both mistakes and growth. It was not easy getting people to share failures. Everybody wants to talk about how successful they are, but I’m more interested in sharing how people overcome struggles before moving forward to success. These entrepreneurs shared because they believed in my mission of helping others to avoid the same mistakes. My key takeaway after a decade of sharing these stores: We all make mistakes, but asking for help…