Member News

Paul Gaier, who worked for two decades as an advertising director and publisher at several Illinois newspapers, has joined Adams Publishing Group as regional president for Northern Wisconsin.

Gaier began his newspaper career in Chippewa Falls, where his father was publisher, before leaving to attend college at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. Most recently, he served as general manager of Fond du Lac-based Action Printing since 2020. Prior to that role, he was regional vice president for a group of Illinois newspapers that included the Rockford Register Star and the (Peoria) Journal Star.

John Leacock, who started his career in 1994 at a Wisconsin newspaper, has been named interim business editor for the Albuquerque Journal, where he has served as a copy editor since October.

A native of Barbados, Leacock moved to Wisconsin after graduating from Columbia College in New York. He worked as an editor for Point Publications in Stevens Point and as a reporter for the Central Wisconsin Radio Network and Wisconsin Public Radio. In 1999, he joined the Wisconsin State Journal as a copy editor. He went on to serve as interim national foreign editor and assistant news editor before joining the Florida Times-Union, where he worked as a metro night editor and copy editor.

Former Wisconsin reporter Dave Newbart has been named managing editor of news for the Chicago Sun-Times. Newbart has been with the Sun-Times for the past five years, serving as the interim managing editor for the last 11 months and previously as the deputy managing editor, news and city desk editor.

He previously held leadership roles with the Chicago Reader and DNAInfo/Chicago. From 1993-1997, he worked as a reporter for The (Madison) Capital Times, where he covered the University of Wisconsin and higher education in Wisconsin and was the newspaper's lead reporter during the 1994 campaign for governor.

Former Milwaukee-based data reporter Kevin Crowe has joined The Washington Post as a data reporter embedded with the Climate team, the newspaper has announced.

Crowe, a bilingual journalist who for the last four years worked for the USA Today Investigations team, previously worked as a data reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, inewsource in San Diego and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Derick Kelly, a longtime sports enthusiast and author has joined the (Prairie du Chien) Courier Press as a sports news reporter, the newspaper announced last month.

Kelly, who graduated from Prairie du Chien High School, earned a degree in history from UW-Milwaukee in 2010. While in college, he attended the Society of American Baseball Research annual summer conference and started a booster club for UW-Milwaukee alumnus to involve fans in athletics programs. In 2016, he self-published the book "From the Maroons to the Hawks," in which he chronicled Prairie du Chien atheltics from 1897 to 2016.

Brian Reisinger, a former newspaper reporter who now works as a writer and political consultant, has joined the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Ideas Lab as a contributor and collaborator, the newspaper announced last week.

In his new role, he will write about rural issues from a perspective that comes from his roots on the family farm in Sauk County. A graduate of UW-Eau Claire, he has served as a reporter for the Wausau Daily Herald and Nashville Business Journal, and he's a frequent freelance contributor to publications across the country. Since 2015, Reisinger has worked on the U.S. Senate campaigns of Republicans Lamar Alexander and Ron Johnson, as well as Scott Walker's run for governor. He currently serves as the president and chief content officer of Platform Communications in Madison.

Rick Olivo, who has been working in the newspaper business since 1973, is retiring after more than 31 years with the Ashland Daily Press.

Olivo began as a reporter with the The Skyline, the weekly newspaper of the Naval Air Station in Meridian, Miss. Since then, he has worked at newspapers in Odessa, Tex., Phoenix Ariz., and Hayward, Wis. He started full-time with the Daily Press in 1991, following an earlier stint with the paper in 1980.

Bill Gaier, who served as publisher of The Daily Reporter in 2016, is returning to the company. He has been named group publisher, leading the company's markets in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Oregon, BridgeTower Media announced earlier this month.

Just four months after becoming publisher of The Daily Reporter in 2016, Gaier relocated to Minnesota, being named publisher of two other BridgeTower products Finance & Commerce and Minnesota Lawyer. He's been with the publications ever since. He previously held leadership positions for Townsend Communications, several McClatchy/Knight Ridder properties and the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

BridgeTower Media has named Steve Schuster as the new managing editor of The Daily Reporter and Wisconsin Law Journal, the newspapers announced earlier this month. Both publications are in Milwaukee.

Schuster, who has more than a decade of experience as a journalist covering legal, business and public policy matters, previously worked as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun Media Group and as an editor with Bloomberg’s Bureau of National Affairs. He also worked as digital editor and assignment manager at WBAY-TV in Green Bay and as a digital producer for TMJ4 in Milwaukee.

The New York Times has named Mario Koran, an award-winning Wisconsin Watch investigative journalist, to its inaugural class of the Local Investigations Fellowship, a program that gives journalists the opportunity to produce signature investigative work focused on their state or region that will be published by The Times and made available for free for co-publication by local newsrooms. Koran’s project focuses on the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.

Interested applicants can apply to the Local Investigations Fellowship here.