Coastline Pilot editor resigns

After nearly five years with the Coastline Pilot, including more than a year as editor, S.J. Cahn is stepping down from his post.

“There are some things, professionally and personally, that now seems like the time to get to,” Cahn said. “I love newspapers and love the community we serve, but I realized there are chances I simply want to take right now.”

Cahn started as city editor at the Coastline Pilot’s sister paper, the Daily Pilot, in March 1999, just weeks before the paper covered a murder on a Costa Mesa playground. That coverage, of a man who drove his Cadillac into students and teachers, won the paper a statewide news award.

He also has helped oversee the Coastline Pilot as it won more than a dozen similar awards in the past years, including for its coverage last year of the Bluebird landslides.

The 37-year-old Cahn started his career at a small weekly newspaper in Missouri. He has worked in the Washington bureau of the St. Louis PostDispatch and as a copy editor at the Kansas City Star. He earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He also has a bachelor’s degree from Notre Dame and a master’s degree in English from the University of Washington.

“Steve will be missed by me and all of his co-workers at the Coastline Pilot,” Publisher Tom Johnson said. “He has been instrumental in our success and a strong voice in not only our editorial pages, but throughout the community as well.”

A replacement has not been named, Johnson said.

Though he is leaving the paper, Cahn stressed that he believes firmly in the paper’s mission and its future.

“There is a lot of talk these days about the future of journalism and, especially, of newspapers,” he said. “We are sure to see changes. But I think that people will always most want to know about news in their own community. News from city hall or the school district, and youth sports — which I always have said is a core part of our paper — is the most important and most immediate to them. The Internet or anything else that comes along won’t change that.”

Cahn’s last day will be today.