King named new editor of High Profile section

Cyd King has been named editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Sunday High Profile section, replacing Bobby Ampezzan.

King, 51, founded and edited the Northwest Arkansas Profiles section for the Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest edition. From 2000-10, she estimates having written 150 personality features similar to those in High Profile. She moves to her new job, starting immediately, from the Democrat-Gazette’s business and state news departments in Little Rock.

High Profile “is really what I love to do,” King said. “I love being out and about, meeting new people.”

Ampezzan, 39, has been High Profile editor since 2012. He is leaving to be managing editor of a new public radio venture, the Regional Journalism Collaboration, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In his new position, he will lead expanded news coverage on public radio throughout Arkansas, based at station KUAR in Little Rock.

“Bobby has done an excellent job selecting interesting and inspiring Arkansans to feature in the section,” senior features editor Kim Christ said, and King is “ideally suited” to High Profile. “She is so personable, a good journalist, and never met a stranger.”

King’s previous experience made her “an absolute natural for this,” said Managing Editor David Bailey. “It’s really rare to have the opportunity to replace a person with his mentor and teacher.”

“Cyd hired me” for the Northwest section, Ampezzan said, “and my first job for the newspaper was to be her assistant on Northwest Profiles.”

King, from Dardanelle, credits her background in business reporting for her success at starting the features and society-oriented section, modeled after High Profile. Her areas of business news coverage included Wal-Mart and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Wal-Mart’s headquarters city, Bentonville.

“Business is society,” she said.

She left the Northwest newsroom for a stint in public relations, returning to the Democrat-Gazette during Ampezzan’s turn at the helm of High Profile.

“He’s done a great job,” King said. “When I got here, I noticed how much he’d grown” in the job’s requirements of organization and “attention to the craft of writing and journalism.”

Michigan native Ampezzan said what he’s most enjoyed about the job has been “meeting people on their own terms. It’s one area of the newspaper where we give the space for people to reflect about their place in our community, and their churches and their nonprofits.”

King attends Christ Episcopal Church in Little Rock and volunteers for the Arkansas Local Food Network.

Also, the High Profile cover story is a coveted recognition, Ampezzan said, “a certain upper echelon of success.”

“I’d be so honored,” he said, “to one day be a High Profile cover.”

The High Profile section debuted on Jan. 5, 1986, created and edited by Phyllis Brandon. Its second editor, Rachel Chaney, took the post in 2009. Chaney is currently the newspaper’s business editor.

Coming in as High Profile’s fourth editor, King said she plans no changes in the section’s coverage of accomplishments, personalities, human interest, weddings, social events and charity causes.

“It takes time, and it takes attention,” King said. “You have to take the time to get to know people. There’s a lot of flair, and a lot of detail, this coverage.

“It’s not like a regular assignment.”

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