Changes Coming To BHC Opinion/Editorial Page

Veteran journalist Suzanne Tate, who spent 13 years reporting, writing and editing in Southwest Virginia and was last at The Virginian-Pilot, is the new opinion page editor at the Bristol Herald Courier.
Tate, 39, a Norfolk native, started at the Herald Courier on Aug. 25 and replaces Andrea Hopkins, who recently left the newspaper to attend medical school.

Tate has nearly 17 years of newspaper experience and began her journalism career at The Coalfield Progress in Norton, Va., where she worked as a reporter, page designer and editor.

In 1996, she won statewide “Best in Show” writing honors for a nine-part series on teen pregnancy. She won 17 personal Virginia Press Association writing awards while leading the Norton newspaper to nearly 100 writing, design and photography honors during her five-year tenure as managing editor there.

“This area is a second home to me and the place where I have spent the majority of my adult life, so I am excited to return to it,” Tate said. “It is not my native home, but it is my adopted home. My husband was raised here. My three children were born here. My in-laws are nearby.”

Tate, a master gardener who will live in Bristol, Va., with her husband, Robert Baird, has been a member of the Virginia Press Association’s news committee since 2000 and its chairwoman since 2007.
She joined The Virginian-Pilot in 2005 to lead its education team, which covered 600 public and private schools in South Hampton Roads. In 2006, she was promoted to Chesapeake city editor, directing a team of five reporters who covered the growing city of 215,000 people. Tate was promoted to suburban team leader in January 2008 to lead a team of eight reporters and an assistant team leader in covering two of Virginia’s fastest-growing cities, Chesapeake and Suffolk.

“We are thrilled to have Suzanne join us,” said Herald Courier Managing Editor J. Todd Foster. “Like her predecessor, she brings an independent streak and will evaluate issues and politics not based on party labels but on their merits or lack thereof.”

Said Tate: “I’m well versed on the issues local people face, having lived and worked in the region for nearly 14 years. But I want to talk to as many readers as possible to hear their concerns and reflect that on the Opinion pages.

“Talking to readers is the most rewarding part of any journalism job.”

The Herald Courier also has added four new editorial cartoonists, three of them Pulitzer Prize winners, to its Opinion page lineup. Included is Clay Bennett, a Pulitzer winner while at The Christian Science Monitor and, since January, a staff member at the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

“I really appreciate the vote of confidence and hope that both you and the readers there in Bristol will enjoy seeing my work on a regular basis,” Bennett told the newspaper via e-mail.

Bennett was the editorial cartoonist for The Monitor for nearly 10 years and, while there, was a Pulitzer finalist five consecutive years, winning in 2002. He has won virtually every other editorial cartoon award in journalism and in 2001 was named Editorial Cartoonist of the Year by Editor & Publisher magazine.

Bennett was the editorial cartoonist at the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times from 1981 until he was fired in 1994, whereupon he spent more than three years in “professional oblivion” before being hired by The Monitor.

“The Christian Science Monitor saved my career,” Bennett says. “The editors there showed faith in me when few in this business seemed willing to.”

Other cartoonists whose work will appear in the Herald Courier are:

* Lisa Benson, a freelance artist and graphic designer who has drawn local cartoons for the Victor Valley (Calif.) Daily Press since 1992.

“Conservative describes her politically. Brilliant describes her artistically,” said Alan Shearer, editorial director of the syndicate Washington Post Writers Group. “A combination of artistic talent, moral indignation and strong point of view mesh somehow to produce some of the finest work I have ever seen from a local cartoonist. Looking at her portfolio, I was blown away.”

* Pulitzer winner Signe Wilkinson, whose first full-time cartooning job was in 1982 at the San Jose Mercury News. She has worked at the Philadelphia Daily News since the mid-1980s.

* Nick Anderson, an avowed independent with the Houston Chronicle “who covers politics and contemporary cultural issues in a way that connects with readers,” according to Washington Post Writers Group.

“I approach my work with a healthy skepticism for the ideological extremists littering our political landscape,” Anderson, a 2005 Pulitzer winner, explains in his biography.