Bill Church

Notable work and positions

The Santa Fe New Mexican - Executive Editor
The News & Observer / The Herald-Sun - Executive Editor (2021-2024)
GateHouse Media - Senior Vice President of News; Austin American-Statesman - Editor-in-Chief
Sarasota Herald-Tribune - Executive Editor

Biography

Bill Church is a longtime American newspaper editor who began his career covering high school sports for a weekly newspaper in Oklahoma. As executive editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, he led the newsroom during its 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative collaboration with the Tampa Bay Times exposing conditions inside Florida's mental hospitals. He went on to serve as executive editor of the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon, before joining GateHouse Media in 2016 as senior vice president of news, a role in which he set news strategy across the company's newsroom network and led its Center for News & Design. In 2019 he added the title of editor-in-chief of the Austin American-Statesman. Church joined The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, and its sister paper, The Herald-Sun in Durham, as executive editor in September 2021, leading the newsrooms through the end of the pandemic and several major national news events. In 2024 he left to become executive editor of The Santa Fe New Mexican, a family-owned newspaper, reuniting with publisher Pat Dorsey, with whom he had previously worked in Sarasota and Austin.

Career highlights

• 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting · Led the Sarasota Herald-Tribune newsroom during its award-winning collaboration with the Tampa Bay Times on conditions in Florida's mental hospitals.
• GateHouse Media news strategy 2016-2019 · Directed news strategy across GateHouse's national newspaper group as senior vice president of news.