Charles Apple

Here’s wishing a happy VizEds birthday to Judy Le, news editor of The Virginian-Pilot.

Judy was a page designer here at The Pilot for seven years. She was promoted to assistant design team leader in 2005 and then to news editor in March 2006.

Earlier this year, Judy was featured in a house ad for the newly-redesigned Pilot:

The copy reads:

Judy Le is the news editor, in charge of The Pilot’s newsroom at night. She was conceived in Vietnam, born in Minnesota and grew up the youngest of seven in Iowa. In her spare time, Judy loves to play the piano, read, watch some “embarrassing” TV and hang out with friends. She lives with her fiance Jeffrey (”He loves to cook. I love to eat.”) and cat Maddy in Norfolk.

Growing up, I wanted to be: A rock star/mad scientist.

My most cherished material possession is: My little upright piano. A friend of mine was selling hers and I bought it on a whim, having always wanted to learn how to play. I love it so much now.

If I weren’t a journalist, I would like to be: A number theorist.

The craziest thing I’ve ever done is: I cannot discuss per conditions of the settlement.

The one thing I’m most proud of is: That I took care of my mom when she was dying of cancer.

My all-time favorite TV show is: Oh, lord. Felicity. Can you believe it?

My biggest quirk is: That I love to do really impractical math problems.

Previously, Judy worked at The Gazette of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as a news artist and The Sun of Bremerton, Wash., as a copy editor and page designer. She graduated from Northwestern University in 1997.

As news editor, Judy doesn’t get a chance to design pages any more. But here are a few samples of her work from her old design days. If you’ve seen any of my presentations, you might recognize some of them:

The two on the right, in particular, I use as great examples of creative problem-solving. The one on the far left features illustration work from yours truly. Judy had a great idea and was very flexible with my work. She’s always been fun to work with.

See more of Judy’s design work at NewsPageDesigner.

Judy shares a birthday with Reagan Branham of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ellen Lynch of The State of Columbia, S.C., singer Ciara Harris, painter Pablo Picasso and hot-tempered basketball coach Bobby Knight. Plus, today is Punk for a Day Day. Seriously.

Best wishes, Judy! I hope you’re having a great vacation!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 5:24 am and is filed under Happy birthday, Virginian-Pilot, Visual Editors, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.