Fletcher comes to Sound from Gatehouse Media, where she was Regional Vice President responsible for 85 publications spread over 13 states based in Joplin, Mo. Prior to Gatehouse, she was Division Vice President for Community Newspaper Holdings from 2000 to 2007, responsible for their Oklahoma group. She also worked for American Publishing Company from 1988 to 1999, after beginning her career working for a small daily in Woodward, Okla., in 1985.

She is an honors graduate of the University of Oklahoma and serves on the board of directors of the Local Media Association (formerly Suburban Newspapers of America). Gloria is married with two sons, ages 14 and 17, and she and her family are excited about the move to Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.

She will take up her new position in April and will be relocating her family over the summer.

“I’m honored to join Sound Publishing and Black Press,” Fletcher said. “I’m anxious to be on-site to learn about the area, the plethora of print and digital news products and really get to know the many talented people who produce them. My family and I are very excited to get there.”

Fletcher’s appointment was announced March 26 by Rick O’Connor, Chief Operating Officer of Black Press of Victoria, B.C., Sound Publishing’s parent company, and company owner David Black.

“David and I are excited about the quality of leadership that Gloria brings to her new position and we hope to build on the new acquisitions we announced in the fall of last year,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor thanked both Josh O’Connor and Lori Maxim, Vice Presidents of Sound Publishing, for their leadership and guidance of Sound over the past two years. He also thanked executives Mark Warner and Don Kendall for their work in bringing both the Port Angeles and Sequim newspapers into the Sound group over the past few months.

“Gloria is inheriting a group of publishing titles and websites that I think is poised for strong growth given the quality of assets, the health of the marketplace and talented employees,” O’Connor said.

Based in Poulsbo and Bellevue, Wash., Sound Publishing, Inc., owns and operates 38 community newspapers and 14 Little Nickel publications in the greater Puget Sound area. In fall of 2011, Sound Publishing added the Peninsula Daily News (Port Angeles), Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum to their community newspaper holdings. Collectively, Sound Publishing has circulation of 773,126.

Sound Publishing’s broad household distribution blankets the greater Puget Sound region, extending northward from Seattle to Canada, south to Salem, Ore., and westward to the Pacific Ocean.

The new Veterans Life will focus on veterans issues in Kitsap County, while the Whidbey Crosswind will cover those issues for the veteran community on Whidbey Island.

Lori Maxim, Sound Publishing’s Vice President for West Sound Operations, hailed the opportunity to serve veteran communities whose service and interests deserve dedicated publications.

“I am so proud that we have created products that will have such lasting effect on our community,” Maxim said. “Veterans LIfe and the new Whidbey Crosswind fill a niche that up until now has not been properly served for our readers and advertisers.”

The debut edition of Veterans Life appeared on newsstands March 23 with the April edition and includes “In Your Name,” a comprehensive look at recent veteran-oriented legislation in Olympia and what it means for returning and longtime veterans. Other features include veteran profiles, personal commentaries from veterans of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and information on Veterans Administration programs and benefits.

Editing the publication is Greg Skinner, a U.S. Army veteran of the first Gulf War. Skinner also serves as editor of the Central Kitsap Reporter, Bremerton Patriot and Port Orchard Independent newspapers. Veterans Life publisher is Sean McDonald.

“Written for veterans and edited by a veteran, our mission is to give readers a monthly news magazine that readers can count on for needed information on benefits and veterans rights,” Skinner said. “It’s what has been missing in the local media lineup.”

Veterans Life will be produced in Sound Publishing’s office in Silverdale, Kitsap County.

Print distribution will be 8,500 each month through newsstand and subscription. The publication can be found online at www.kitsapveteranslife.com.

Kitsap County is home to more than 38,000 veterans, with hundreds more joining their ranks as they return from deployment in the Middle East.

Sound Publishing has also refocused the current Whidbey Crosswind publication (until recently, a weekly newspaper covering base activities at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island) into a monthly news magazine serving veterans and military retirees on Whidbey Island.

Launch of the refocused Whidbey Crosswind, to be edited by Kathy Reed in Sound Publishing’s Coupeville office, was also in late March. The debut edition includes coverage of the local American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars groups, and other features of interest to Whidbey Island veterans.

“We discovered early on in producing the Whidbey Crosswind that we had more readers who were veterans and retirees than active duty military,” Reed said. “This change is a perfect opportunity to better serve our readers by focusing on the issues that directly affect them.”

Print distribution of the Whidbey Crosswind will be 7,000 each month through newsstands and subscription. The publication can be found online at www.whidbeycrosswind.com.

Whidbey Island is home to an estimated 13,300 veterans and military retirees and their families.

Based in Washington State, Sound Publishing, Inc., owns and operates 38 community newspapers and 14 Little Nickel publications in the greater Puget Sound area. In fall of 2011, Sound Publishing added the Peninsula Daily News (Port Angeles), Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum to their community newspaper holdings. Collectively, Sound Publishing has a circulation of 773,126.

Sound Publishing’s broad household distribution blankets the greater Puget Sound region, extending northward from Seattle to Canada, south to Salem, Ore., and westward to the Pacific Ocean.

A veteran print and online journalist, Kelly, 47, has been the editor of the twice-weekly South Whidbey Record for the past six years.

Prior to his time at the Record, he was a reporter at the Daily Herald in Everett and the Seattle Times, and was the editor of the Snoqualmie Valley Record for seven years.

He got his start in the news business as an Army photographer, where he worked for a newspaper in Germany for three years.

“Brian is an award-winning journalist with a reputation for solid investigative reporting,” Review Publisher Donna Etchey said. “We cannot be more pleased to have Brian as part of our team here in Kitsap.”

During the last four years of his tenure at South Whidbey, the Record won more than 75 state and national journalism awards, including General Excellence honors from the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association in 2011. The publication also earned recognition as a “Newspaper of the Year” for being one of the top newspapers for its size in the United States and Canada in 2008, an honor bestowed by the Suburban Newspapers of America organization.

A 1992 graduate of the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism, Kelly is an insufferable Ducks fan, especially during football season. He is married, and met his wife Leslie, a longtime journalist who has worked at dailies in Kansas and Washington, while they both worked at the Everett Herald.
Kelly took the post on March 5.

Mark Klaas, editor of the Auburn Reporter, is an award-winning journalist who has worked in the newspaper industry for more than 25 years.

He previously worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers and magazines in Idaho, Oregon and California before moving to the Puget Sound in 1993. He also worked in the sports department at the former King County Journal Newspaper before taking his current position at the Auburn Reporter in 2007.

Mark lives in King County with his wife, Sara, and children, Derek and Elizabeth.

Based in Washington State, Sound Publishing newspapers, classified publications, and partner newspapers serve western Washington and western Oregon communities. Sound’s expansive household distribution blankets the entire Greater Puget Sound region, extending northward from Seattle to Canada, south to Salem, Oregon, and westward to the Pacific Ocean.

Dennis Box has been the editor of the Kent Reporter and the Covington-Maple Valley Reporter. Dennis is excited to re-join the Courier Herald, as he was an integral part of the start up team that launched the Bonney Lake Courier-Herald in 2003.

Box began his career in media in the early 1980s as a writer and film editor with Pal Productions based in Seattle. Pal Productions produced a series of mountain climbing documentaries for PBS along with features, political films and commercials.

In 1989 Box founded Parallax North, a motion picture production and writing services company. While operating Parallax North, he also wrote about government, politics, boxing, horse racing and produced humor columns for magazines and newspapers.

Box graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in English and film making. He entered the university in 1971. He was drafted and joined the Navy after completing his freshman year. He was honorably discharged in 1976.

He has two children. Kathleen is a fourth-year law student at Gonzaga University. Christopher is completing a communications degree and works as an intern at KJR.

Based in Washington State, Sound Publishing newspapers, classified publications, and partner newspapers serve western Washington and western Oregon communities. Sound’s broad household distribution blankets the entire Greater Puget Sound region, extending northward from Seattle to Canada, south to Salem, Oregon, and westward to the Pacific Ocean.

Prior to his current role in Bothell, Oliver spent nearly seven years cutting his teeth in the newspaper business with The Seattle Times. A native of Portland, Oregon, Oliver moved up to Seattle 13 years ago after graduating from Washington State University.

In his spare time, Oliver enjoys playing golf and spending as much time as possible in the great outdoors.

We are very excited to be adding him to our National/Regional team and look forward to his continued success.

Manfred Tempelmayr, the president of Sound Publishing from 2000 to 2010, received the Miles Turnbull Master Editor/Publisher award to rounds of applause from his peers in Washington Newspaper Publishers Association.

Co-presenters at the Oct. 7 WNPA awards luncheon were Bill Will, executive director of WNPA, and Sue Ellen Riesau, WNPA Past-President and publisher of the Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum.

“When I was very new to being a publisher and still trying to figure out what exactly a publisher does Manfred offered me his friendship personally and professionally,” said Riesau.

“He recruited me to the board of WNPA and over the next few years he generously mentored me on many levels with his razor sharp insight and wonderful wit,” she said. Arriving at Sound Publishing in October 2000, over the next 10 years Tempelmayr managed the company’s growth to more than double in size while being active with the local chamber of commerce, Kitsap Mental Health and other community organizations on the Kitsap Peninsula.

The earliest acquisitions were the Islands’ Weekly on Lopez Island in 2000, the Journal of the San Juan Islands in Friday Harbor in 2001, and Kingston Community News in 2004.

The Covington/Maple Valley Reporter, which now also serves Black Diamond, was launched in 2005.

The company’s purchase of King County Journal Newspapers in late 2006 secured nine non-dailies on the west side of Puget Sound and shuttered the eponymous daily.

In 2007, Sound started Reporter newspapers for Issaquah/Sammamish and Sumner/Lake Tapps, and bought the Kirkland Courier, Marysville Globe and Arlington Times.

In 2008, it purchased the Enumclaw and Bonney Lake/Lake Tapps Courier-Herald and merged the Sumner/Lake Tapps Reporter with the Bonney Lake weekly.

During Tempelmayr’s years of service as a WNPA trustee, he chaired the Membership & Bylaws, Convention & Workshops, and Advertising committees.

Though he was in line to be president when he retired in 2010, he had been forthcoming about those plans and provided a worthy successor for the Advertising Committee in Lori Maxim, now vice president of West Sound Operations.

Tempelmayr started his newspaper career with an eight-month stint at the Fernwood News in Victoria, B.C., then moved on to a nine-year tenure as reporter and associate editor of the Lake News in Lake Cowichan B.C. For the last six of those years, he served concurrently as general manager of the Cowichan News in Duncan, B.C.

He became part owner of the Duncan paper in 1982, his first experience on the business side of the industry, and in 1984 sold that newspaper to Island Publishers, at that time a subsidiary of Black Press.

Later, as publisher of Ladysmith Chemainus Chronicle, Tempelmayr also managed the Ladysmith Press Division of Island Publishers Limited.

He was named regional manager of the company’s North Island Group in 1988 and vice- president in 1992.

During those years, he served as president of the British Columbia and Yukon Community Newspapers Association and the Canadian Community Newspapers’ Association.

Since retiring, he and his wife Pam spend time in their homes in Poulsbo and the Gulf Islands in British Columbia.

His part-time consulting position with Sound ends in May 2012.

The award commemorates Miles Turnbull, a past executive direct of WNPA and the former publisher of the Leavenworth Echo, who died in 1994. It is presented at the discretion of the WNPA board.

Carol Bower has been a senior sales representative at the Kent Reporter since July 2004, where she has developed strong relationships with her advertisers leading to her success as one of our organizations top performing sales representatives. Before joining Sound Publishing, Carol was in the print sales business specializing in offset printing (forms, letterhead, envelopes, business cards, brochures, ad specialties).

Carol is a Washington native, residing in Kent for the past 22 years. She has two children, an 18-year-old daughter, freshman at SPU and 15-year-old son, freshman at Kentwood High School.

While many newspapers are concerned about declining readership due to the internet age, The Federal Way Mirror is taking the opposite approach - purposefully reducing its frequency of distribution in favor of focusing more resources to publishing an online edition with breaking news content and regular community features that readers have become familiar with in their printed editions.

The Federal Way Mirror will stay focused on providing high quality, local editorial content to their readers, and targeted advertising packages to local and national advertisers. “Our goal is to be the preeminent provider of local content and advertising in Federal Way,” says Josh O’Connor, Vice President of East Sound Newspaper Operations, Sound Publishing, Inc.

Based in Washington State, Sound Publishing newspapers, classified publications, and partner newspapers serve western Washington and western Oregon communities. Sound’s broad household distribution blankets the entire Greater Puget Sound region, extending northward from Seattle to Canada, south to Salem, Oregon, and westward to the Pacific Ocean.

OVP has been owned and operated by local resident Brown M. Maloney for over 23 years. The company produces two Clallam County newspapers, the Sequim Gazette and the Forks Forum. In addition, they also produce two real estate magazines, Olympic Peninsula Homes-Land Magazines, based on the North Olympic Peninsula and Islander Homes-Land Magazine with distribution in Island and San Juan Counties.

Sound Publishing is owned by Victoria B.C.-based Black Press. They are the largest community newspaper group in Washington State with 46 titles and 700,000 circulation. In Kitsap County they own the Bainbridge Island Review, Central Kitsap Reporter, North Kitsap Herald and the Port Orchard Independent. The company publishes high quality newspapers and is the recipient of many statewide and national awards.

“We are thrilled with the purchase of the Sequim Gazette,” said Black Press CEO David Black. “We have been publishing community newspapers for 22 years in Washington State and see this as an opportunity to expand our operations to the North Olympic Peninsula which is a good geographic fit with our other newspaper and website titles The Gazette is one of the best newspapers in the state in terms of quality. We are proud to be the new stewards of the business.”

Said Maloney, “It is with mixed emotions that I reflect upon selling my company, but there is a sense of pride in what my staff has achieved over the past two decades. I am pleased to see Olympic View Publishing pass into the hands of Sound Publishing who are as passionate about newspapers and as committed to community journalism as I have been since 1988.”

The new owners have announced that publisher Sue Ellen Riesau will remain in her role overseeing the operations of the company.

“I’ve been with Brown for almost his entire 23 years here, and of course, I am sad to see the end of an era,” said Riesau. “At the same time however, I have known and worked with Sound Publishing for almost as long. They are a solid newspaper company with a great track record and passion for community newspapers. I look forward to the future.”

Maloney also owns ABC affiliate KONP, an AM/FM radio station in Port Angeles. KONP Radio is a separate company and is not part of this transaction. Maloney will continue to own and operate the station with Todd Ortloff, who is a minority partner in the business.

For further questions, contact Brown M. Maloney at (360) 683-3311 or (360) 460-5051, or Sue Ellen Riesau at (360) 683-3311 or (360) 461-9973.