Introducing new faces in the newsroom

TONY DODERO

I’ve written before how many of our talented staff writers, editors

and photographers outgrow our newspaper and move on to bigger things.

It’s kind of the natural pecking order of journalism, though

sometimes I feel like it’s all backward.

Community news is so important, at least in my estimation.

But that’s just the way of the world, I guess, and as is to be

expected we’ve lost some good staffers of late, but the upside is

that more talent is always waiting in the wings to fill the void.

One of those talents is Cheyne Gateley, who will fill the open job

of art director, vacated by longtime designer and editor Jose Santos,

who left us in December.

Gateley has been toiling at our sister paper, the Glendale

News-Press, where he has been a news editor and the main force in the

design and copy-desk operations. Prior to that, Gateley was a page

designer for the Coastline News, the former name of another sister

paper, the Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot.

Gateley graduated from the Art Institute of Seattle in 1995 and

was a production manager with Trader Publishing for five years before

his stint with the Coastline News.

As the art director, Gateley will be in charge of the overall

graphic quality and design of our paper, and in addition, the hope is

that he will develop more graphics in the way of maps and

illustrations.

The next change is that Danette Goulet, our longtime city editor,

has been promoted to be the managing editor of the aforementioned

Glendale News-Press. Goulet, who was named the Times Community News

Journalist of the Year for 2004, leaves a big void in the way of

talent and institutional knowledge as she had formerly been an

education reporter before being promoted to editor. More on Goulet in

a future column.

Replacing Goulet, though, is someone with oodles of talent as well

as experience.

Carol Chambers will be our new city editor, starting Monday.

After working for several years in the entertainment industry,

Chambers began her journalism career at the daily Santa Clarita

Signal, where she worked as a reporter for four years. She joined our

parent company, Times Community News, in 1998 as the city editor of

the now defunct Santa Clarita Our Times and then worked as a reporter

for the Los Angeles Times Valley Edition.

It was after that stint that she ended up at another of our weekly

papers in the Inland Valley, where she worked for a short time until

it stopped publishing in June.

Chambers holds a degree in journalism from Cal State Northridge.

Another big addition for us is Laila Derakhshanian.

Derakhshanian, the latest news editor for the Daily Pilot, is a

talented page designer who comes to us via the Orange County

Register, where she produced pages for the A section of that paper as

well as several special graphic features.

She is a graduate of the Cal State Fullerton journalism school and

has already proven to be a great addition to our design and copy desk

in the short time that she has been here.

We also have some changes to announce on our reporting staff.

First, Alicia Robinson has been promoted to a senior staff writer

and was named the government and politics reporter for the Daily

Pilot, basically taking over for former staffer Deirdre Newman.

In this job, Robinson will further enhance her role as our

government expert and will cover both city halls in Newport Beach and

Costa Mesa, county government and local politics.

It’s a great job and a great fit for an excellent reporter. Prior

to her stint here, Alicia was a reporter for the Suburban News

Publications, a group of community weeklies in central Ohio, and the

Delaware Gazette, a six-day daily in Ohio’s fastest-growing county.

She is a graduate of Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

Next, Elia Powers has been named to the staff writer ranks of the

Daily Pilot, taking over the general assignment and enterprise beat,

the former domain of Deepa Bharath.

Powers will be charged with producing a number of standing

features for the paper and picking up those slice-of-life stories

that our readers have come to expect of us. Powers arrives via the

Palm Springs Desert Sun, where he worked as a reporter, and prior to

that he was a writer for Campus Times, when it was solely a prep

sports publication produced by the Los Angeles Times Sports staff. He

is a journalism graduate from Northwestern University.

Taking over Alicia Robinson’s old business and environment beat

will be Andrew Edwards, who has been promoted from his short stint as

news assistant at the Daily Pilot.

Edwards really did a great job as news assistant at the Huntington

Beach Independent and Coastline Pilot and has already put together

some good business stories for the Pilot, most recently the latest

news at Triangle Square on Niketown.

Edwards is a graduate of UCLA.

As is often the case with so many new staffers, these new folks

are going to take some time to get to know all the issues and learn

how much our readers value this newspaper.

The readers have my vow that we will work hard to get them up to

speed as fast as possible, but any help by readers and community

leaders will be greatly appreciated.

Until then, I know they’ll get a warm welcome from our readers as

usual.