Michael Chevy Castranova: Harper Lee

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Reported Features: To Kill a Mockingbird anniversary

For the Kalamazoo Gazette 09-05-10
‘Mockingbird’ endures
Readers inspired by themes, ‘magic’

What is it about Harper Lee’s coming-of-age novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” this year celebrating its 50th anniversary of publication, that holds readers, enticing them to reread it time and again?
It could be the Pulitzer Prize winner’s themes of justice, moral courage and isolation, the superb writing, its colorful yet believable characters and evocation of small-town life, the gripping courtroom scenes’ give-and-take, the children’s hair-raising adventures at night, or even its subversive, wry humor. For some, it’s that Lee has yet to publish a second book.

Professional Experience

UNIVERSITY of MISSOURI School of Journalism adjunct instructor, Columbia, Missouri

THE GAZETTE, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Business editor and magazine editor, as well as leading a segment of our news staff, February 2011-December 2022
My role as an editor at The Gazette, the dominant independent seven-day-a-week newspaper in eastern Iowa, continues to adapt as the company explores new avenues. These duties have included heading up business, Sunday and daily news, enterprise, magazines and, for almost a full year, interim managing editor. Here are some highlights:
• Took charge of reboot of Iowa Today section of local in-depth news, features and columns for Sundays.
• Responsible for the page design and copy editing staff.
• Write a Sunday business column, a number of which have been picked up by BusinessWeek.com, Reuters and Middle East North Africa Financial Network, among other sites.
• Also tasked with re-imagining and relaunching Iowa Today, the weekly Sunday local-content section, which involves coordinating writers and photographers from across our departments and platforms.
• Coordinated coverage of homicides, tornadoes and floods as interim news editor, among other tasks, in the absence of a news editor and a managing editor, from October 2013 to August 2014. My job was to keep the trains running. I then helped train the new news editor. For the period that I was juggling being de facto m.e., news editor and Sunday business editor, The Gazette posted an exceptionally strong showing in the Iowa Newspaper Association awards. The Gazette continued to win awards for stories I edited and series I helped develop — including our 10-part “Heroin’s Hold” series and a year-long series on Iowa’s troubled managed-care rollout. The Gazette also won the INA’s first place in Best Business coverage for 2022./span>

•Developing a new series of statewide magazines for 2017 for our Iowa Ideas Conferences.

• Since coming here, I revamped how business was covered and presented, for both daily and Sunday editions. I also conceived and oversaw conversion of Sunday business section from a tabloid to a broadsheet section.

• Spearheaded and emceed successful first event for The Gazette’s business section — attended by 260 business professionals — which ended up financially in the black, as well as its new business breakfast panels, in 2015.

• Oversaw use of social media to promote our business stories.
• Chosen as part of a small group to rethink the corporate vision statement, goals and strategies by soliciting views of employees, then rewriting the documents.

IMAGINATION PUBLISHING, Chicago, Illinois
Senior editor
Edited Forward, a glossy, perfect-bound thought-leadership client magazine that is distributed throughout North America.
• Brought stability to the publication by tightening freelance costs; meeting deadlines; and improving client relations.
• Interviewed chief economists, CFOs and analysts from Wells Fargo, Federal Reserve Bank and Emory University, among others, for major features on the economy.

BUSINESS REVIEW/BUSINESS DIRECT WEEKLY, Kalamazoo, Michigan
Editor
Led staff and freelance editors, reporters, researchers, designers and photographers in the Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids offices of this business-to-business newspaper.
• Spearheaded start-up of the Newhouse publication, from concept and strategy to ongoing weekly print (13,000 ABC audited) and online publication.
• Edited stories that won the Alliance of Area of Business Publications national award for best news scoop, as well as other regional-award-winning stories.
• Conceived themes and recruited speakers for popular quarterly forums and awards events. Also often moderated the forums, which attracted as many has 330 attendees, and wrote speeches for some of our publishers.
• Wrote the weekly editorials and frequent columns, and drew the weekly business cartoons.
• Piloted publication of my book, A Perfectly Logical Explanation, a collection of stories and columns (publisher: Kalamazoo Gazette, 2002).
• Oversaw editorial staff of Lansing newspaper.

NATIONWIDE INSURANCE COMPANIES, Columbus, Ohio
Editor
Edited, wrote and took photos for several nationally distributed corporate publications while managing staff editors, writers and photographers.
• Initiated the acquisition of modern computer equipment, bringing the operation up to industry standards.
• Streamlined information-gathering process for the department.
• Developed companywide home-office events as a member of Nationwide’s first corporate diversity committee.
• Also wrote speeches for vice presidents and regional managers.

BUSINESS FIRST MAGAZINE, Columbus, Ohio
ACCLAIM, Columbus, Ohio
Magazine Editor
Edited both this business weekly news magazine (a supplement to the business newspaper ROP) and the glossy arts quarterly, from their start-ups.
• Reinvented the weekly focus section of the b2b newspaper into a separate supplement, establishing a format used nationwide by more than a dozen other ACBJ papers.
• Created and developed layout formats and columns that were used companywide.
• Prepared the magazines’ annual budgets.
• Wrote the first movie-review column to be syndicated throughout the national chain.

OHIO MAGAZINE, Columbus, Ohio
Associate editor
Instrumental in planning and ongoing development of start-up this statewide glossy news and features monthly.
• Established a statewide network of stringers, writers and photographers for the monthly news columns.
• One of the stories I conceived and edited became a National Magazine Award finalist.
• Performed the duties of manuscript doctor and wrote features and columns.

PLUS ...
I’ve written a blog on sequential art since 2009. I also have written stories for a variety of publications and organizations, including Ohio State University, Columbus Monthly, The Other Paper, Columbus Alive, Victoria’s Secret, Riverside Hospital, The Daily Times of Niles, Ohio, and the governor’s office of the State of Ohio.

AWARDS
• For the time covering when I was de facto m.e., news editor and Sunday business editor at The Gazette, the paper won several first- , second- and third-place awards from the Iowa Newspaper Association. Those included for coverage of government, crime, business (including for some of my columns) and agriculture, as well as for general excellence, best series (on immigrants in Iowa) and best personality feature (on former Gov. Bob Ray) — all of which I edited.

• For the following year, a number of stories I edited placed well in the INA, and The Gazette took first place for business coverage. And for 2016, The Gazette won 25 INA awards, several for stories I edited and series I helped develop — including our 10-part “Heroin’s Hold” series and a year-long series on Iowa’s troubled managed-care rollout.

• At Business Direct Weekly, three of our news stories won the Alliance of Area Business Publications national award for best news scoop — even though we competed with much larger publications.

• At Ohio Magazine, an investigative feature on the transportation of hazardous waste that I developed and edited became a National Magazine Award finalist — in the magazine’s first year.

EDUCATION
BS, English (with a concentration on Mark Twain), with minors in journalism and education, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio
Graduate work also at YSU