For the first time since the Snohomish County Business Journal began publishing in April 1998 (originally beginning as The Herald Business Journal) there will be a new name on the masthead.
Following my retirement as the founding editor Apr. 30, long-time Herald employee Kurt Batdorf will be directing the growth of the paper.
Batdorf is an experienced journalist and editor with extensive local newspaper background that will serve him well in providing the Snohomish County Business Journal’s business coverage.
He graduated in 1985 from The Evergreen State College in Olympia with a B. A. degree. During his last two quarters, he helped his mother and stepfather start the Skagit River Post, a weekly newspaper based in Burlington. Later, when his parents acquired the Sedro-Woolley Courier-Times and its print shop, Batdorf helped incorporate the two newspapers’ staffs and operations. From 1988 to 1991, he was editor of the Monroe Monitor, then took on the editor’s job at the North Snohomish Weekly in Arlington from 1991 to 1995.
“I covered a lot of night meetings and community news in those first 10 years,” he said. “It taught me that community news is really the most important news.”
In early 1995, Batdorf took a job on the new universal copy desk of Sound Publishing Co.’s office in Oak Harbor, where two copy editors were responsible for designing all news and feature pages for the twice-weekly Whidbey News-Times and South Whidbey Record and the weekly Islands Sounder that serves the San Juan Islands.
In 2000, Batdorf joined the news desk at The Herald as a copy editor, where he most often designed and edited the paper’s Local section and occasional Business pages, along with writing headlines and giving the final read to completed pages.
Along the way, Batdorf won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association for headline writing, editorial pages, page design, spot news coverage and community service.
“I’m looking forward to covering the Snohomish County business community. With all the changes in how readers get their news and how local businesses adapt to consumers’ evolving buying habits, there’s a lot of news to cover,” he said.
On the side, he’s also editor of the Northwest Sports Car News for the Northwest Region of the Sports Car Club of America (www.nwr-scca.org).
Please welcome Kurt Batdorf, the Snohomish County Business Journal’s new Community Business Editor.
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