Charles Apple

Paul Wallen — laid off nine days ago by the Sun Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale, where he was design director — has accepted a position as Assistant Managing Editor for Design and Sports at the Kerrville Daily Times.

The Daily Times circulates about 8,880 weekdays and 10,450 on weekends in Kerrville, Texas, about 80 miles west of Austin.

Paul writes:

Kerrville is in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, an area my wife and I have wanted to live for a long time. We’ll be just an hour away from all my immediate family, my parents, sister, niece and nephew. And I expect it to be a fun job with lots of hands-on design work.

Paul sent along this photo of the Kerrville area. In fact,
this might be the property he’s hoping to buy. I, for one,
didn’t realize it got this wet in Texas. This could easily
be the lowcountry of South Carolina.
—

Managing Editor Rayanne Schmid has been great through this process, patiently answering a million questions from me. I can tell we share a passion for putting out a great newspaper, so I’m really eager to get to know the rest of the staff and see what we can all accomplish together.

We’re still working out the details of our move, but I expect my first day at the Daily Times to be sometime in late April.

I can’t help but think how this kind of brings me full circle. My first newspaper job was at the Marshall News Messenger, a similarly-sized daily in East Texas. I’ve always believed that great design and presentation isn’t reserved for big papers. And some of my best times have been in smaller newsrooms. There’s a collaborative approach and connection with the community that you just don’t get with the metro papers.

A column by Paul from the Marshall
News Messenger, where he was sports
edtior in the early 1990s.
—

I just want to thank everyone who expressed support and wished us well the last couple weeks. It’s such a tough time right now and I’m saddened almost every day to see what’s happening to journalists and newsrooms all over the country. I even thought pretty hard about taking a break from newspapers. But I still love the work and if things turn around, I’d really like to be there when it happens. I feel extremely lucky to end up with such an appealing job in a place we really want to live so quickly after losing my job in Florida.

Paul started out as a journalist for the U.S. Navy in the late 1980s. In 1991, as we said above, he became sports editor of the Marshall, Texas, News Message. In 1994, he was named graphics editor of the Evansville, Indiana, Press. He became design editor for a chain of suburban papers near Chicago in 1996.

He was a designer for The Virginian-Pilot from 1997 to 1999 and then for the Lexington, Ky., Herald-Leader from 1998 to 2000. He was design editor of the Baltimore Sun for three years before being named managing editor for visuals for the Lewiston, Maine, Sun Journal. Under Paul’s guidance, the Sun Journal earned an incredible 22 awards in the 2007 Society for News Design contest. Paul’s young protégé, Megan Lavey, won six herself.

Paul leaped over to the west coast to be a sports designer for the San Diego Union-Tribune for a year before heading to Ft. Lauderdale in 2007 as design director. He spent nearly two years at the Sun Sentinel, overseeing the paper’s massive redesign last fall.

A few samples of his work:

Paul was laid off by the Sun Sentinel March 25. Find that story here.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 10:40 am and is filed under Job changes, News design, Small papers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.