3 in newsroom moved to new roles

Editors take posts on wire, city desks, Arkansas Online

Glen Chase
Glen Chase

Two reporters and an editor have moved to new positions in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Arkansas Online newsroom.

photo

Amanda Roberts

photo

Gavin Lesnick

Glen Chase, who was covering agriculture for the Democrat-Gazette, has been named the newspaper's senior wire editor. Chase, 56, joined the paper in 1993 and has been a reporter, deputy city editor and city editor.

As senior wire editor, Chase selects and edits content from the paper's various wire services for print.

Chase, a University of Maine graduate, resides in Conway. He said his experiences at the Democrat-Gazette have given him "a good handle on what's going on in Arkansas and a familiarity with Arkansas readers."

"Because the wires involve so much information, you have to distill it down to the kinds of stories that will have the most impact on our readers. ... People want to know. They want the information, but it's got to be relevant to them," Chase said.

Amanda Roberts, 34, who previously worked on the wire desk, has been named assistant city editor. A lifelong Arkansan who joined the Democrat-Gazette as a copy editor in 2008, she now supervises reporters covering the Little Rock and North Little Rock city governments, federal courts and military.

Roberts, a graduate of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said she is excited to collaborate with reporters.

"The big difference for me is when I was on the wire desk, I was dealing with copy that was coming in from other places that had already gone through editors, and I had no interaction at all with the reporters on those stories. Being able to work with the reporters, it's a big change for me and it's a learning curve, but it's something I'm excited to be able to do," she said.

Gavin Lesnick, hired in 2009 as Arkansas Online's first reporter, now leads the multimedia news team as its senior online editor. Lesnick, a 30-year-old Maryland native who graduated from the University of Indiana, said he plans to expand the website's social media presence.

"We definitely value social media a great deal, and we like that it connects us to our audience and it lets us communicate with our readers when we have stories," he said.

Lesnick said breaking news will remain a major focus of the website.

"Arkansas Online has a rich history of being a leading news source across the state. I was really proud to have contributed to that as a reporter, and I'm really excited to help grow it from here in this role," he said.

Democrat-Gazette Managing Editor David Bailey said the paper and its online counterpart are in good hands.

"It means that we're going to continue to have what I think has been for years the best wire desk in America. I think it's also going to mean we're going to have a much more robust, energetic digital presentation of the news," he said.

Metro on 08/30/2015

Upcoming Events