'Nobody ever runs alone': Meet the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel senior leadership team
When I was announced as executive editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, my hometown newspaper, the story we ran ended with these words – drawn from a piece I wrote when I ran a solo marathon at the start of the pandemic:
Nobody ever really runs alone.
The same is true of the news business. For all of the romanticized, movie-version portrayals of a lonely reporter slogging away on an impossible assignment, the reality is we rely on a team of reporters, photojournalists, editors and designers to produce what you read every day in print and online. We work closely with 10 other Wisconsin newsrooms as part of the USA TODAY NETWORK – and we have dozens upon dozens of sister newsrooms across the country.
In short: Journalism is a team sport.
In my last column, I told you a bit about myself and my vision for a newsroom that puts the community first and, really, belongs to all of us. This column is to introduce you to our senior leadership team – an exceptionally talented group and one that will help chart the future of our newsroom as we work to cover this community we love.
It also includes a request – please read to the bottom – for your thoughts on things that new members of our team should know about Milwaukee and Wisconsin, and on places all of us should visit to truly understand the richness of our community.
Jill Williams: deputy editor/Features, sports and new initiatives
Jill joined the Journal Sentinel staff in 2000 as our features editor and over the years took on ever-expanding roles. She is a newsroom force around justice and equity issues and one of the most thoughtful, compassionate people I know. For more than two decades, she led our features team – from food and festivals to concerts and the arts – and spearheaded coverage of Wisconsin culture. She has also served as the newsroom liaison to our advertising and marketing departments and has been a trainer around justice and equity issues for our newsroom and company.
She will continue working with our features team, including new editor Chelsey Lewis, as well with our sports team. She also will focus our newsroom efforts around recruiting, mentoring, coaching and making sure we do a better job connecting with the whole of our community.
Jill, who previously worked at newspapers in Philadelphia and her native New Jersey, is also a member of our editorial board. She and her husband, Sherman, our visuals editor, live in Bayside. Jill can be reached at jill.williams@jrn.com.
Rachel Piper: deputy editor/News, projects and investigations
Rachel joined our team in 2018 to oversee our digital coverage and later added breaking and trending news to her portfolio. We all relied on her steady hand during 2020, when Wisconsin was at the epicenter of politics, protests and the pandemic and our newsroom went virtual almost overnight. She is a mentor and advocate for many new editors and young journalists and brings a fierce determination to whatever she tackles.
She is taking on a role that I recently held, strengthening our news reporting in Milwaukee and statewide, from daily beat coverage to short-term enterprise to deep-dive projects and investigations. This includes, of course, helping us maintain our track record of producing world-class investigative and explanatory journalism. Rachel is a Pulitzer Prize winner herself, as a key part of the Salt Lake Tribune team that won the 2017 Local Reporting award for its coverage of the shameful treatment of sexual assault victims at Brigham Young University.
Rachel, a Utah native, and her husband, Matt, live in Fox Point, along with their toddler daughter, Rosie, and three cats: Boagie, Betsy and Marge. Rachel can be reached at rpiper@gannett.com.
Lainey Seyler: deputy editor/Audience
Lainey, who has spent more than six years in our newsroom in a variety of roles, quickly rose through the ranks to this critical position, focused on growing our audience and delivering a top-notch experience to everyone who comes to us for news. Lainey has an incredible attention to detail and a patient but urgent approach, which suits her well in a fast-moving, high-stress environment. She works to be sure we are giving readers the information they are looking for in the way they want it, no matter the medium (text, video, audio) or the platform (online, social media, newsletter, print and more).
Lainey oversees our visuals team and breaking and trending news teams, as well as our producers and planners, marrying a range of disciplines around common goals. She has a keen sense of how the many pieces of a package work together, and how to present information in a way that puts our readers – and viewers and listeners – first.
Lainey and her wife, Jenny, live in Milwaukee with their cat, Bean. Lainey can be reached at lainey.seyler@jrn.com.
Jim Fitzhenry: Ideas Lab, editorial page editor
A few months back, Jim was introduced as our Ideas Lab, editorial page and community engagement editor.
Jim’s role includes overseeing our editorial board and the editorial voice of the Journal Sentinel and the USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin, directing the IdeasLab and its solutions-focused journalism and overseeing our columnists and opinion contributors. He also focuses on creating vibrant spaces and platforms for exchanging ideas, elevating unheard voices and engaging the community around our journalism. That includes forums and events, but also pursuing new ways for us to connect with readers and spearheading efforts to draw and maintain financial support from foundations, outside groups and individuals for our journalism.
In earlier roles in Oshkosh and Appleton, Jim oversaw the operation of 10 newsrooms in our statewide network and launched the award-winning Kids in Crisis series, which focused on teen mental health issues and included a documentary shown nationwide. He and his wife, Becky, have three grown children and live in Oshkosh with their dog, Penny. Jim can be reached at jfitzhenry@gannett.com.
You’ll be hearing more from each of them in the weeks ahead – and, over time, you’ll also be hearing from other members of our staff in this space.
These columns will be an opportunity to share our successes, talk about challenges, answer reader questions and to pull the curtain back a bit on what goes into the great work we do. They’re a chance to start a dialogue – about what’s working in the community and what’s not, what deserves to be celebrated, and what needs more scrutiny.
So, we also want to hear from you.
We soon will be welcoming a series of new faces to our team – reporters, a photojournalist, a new food critic and more. And, with summer on the horizon, we’ll also have a dozen college interns arriving from across the country.
To that end, I’m hoping you’ll take a minute to share your thoughts on two questions:
What do we all most need to know about Milwaukee and Wisconsin to understand what makes our community tick?
And where should we visit to really understand our community, its successes and its struggles?
We’ll use your thoughts on the first question to help introduce our new staff members to the community, and we’ll use the thoughts on the second to map out some places we need to visit.
You can share your ideas at bit.ly/TellMJS.
Or you can email me at greg.borowski@jrn.com, or any of the other leaders at their email addresses above.
Greg Borowski is executive editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. You can follow him on Twitter @GregJBorowski and reach him via greg.borowski@jrn.com.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Meet the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel senior leadership team
