Ryan Sholin

I’m happy to announce that on Monday I’ll be showing up for my first day of work at Gatehouse Media in Fairport, New York.

I’ll be working with Howard Owens, Bill Blevins, an awesome team of developers and designers, and many more talented folks. (Yes, I will try to pull that remembering-all-your-names on the first try trick again, but O’Hare-induced sleep deprivation may have played a role on my last trip out to Fairport.) My role will be helping many of Gatehouse’s smallest papers give their readers the best online local news experience possible.

For those of you keeping score, yes, this means that I’m leaving my post at the Santa Cruz Sentinel. I can’t thank everyone I’ve worked with at the Sentinel enough, so I won’t try to here. I’m proud of what we put into place in the past year, all difficult circumstances aside. This is a hard business to be in right now in many towns, and the people I’ve been working with know it firsthand, not as some abstract link in an industry blog.

To answer a few questions that keep coming up:

• No, we’re not moving to Rochester this weekend. We’ll skip this winter, move in the spring, and I’ll have the pleasure of seeing a lot more of my wife and daughter for the next few months.
• No, I wasn’t exactly looking for a new job, but it found me. To be more precise, Howard sent me a video message on Facebook. If you’re thinking “Hey, I told Ryan to call me when he was looking for work!” all I can say is thank you.
• Yes, I am excited to be moving to Yankee country. I’m looking forward to living in a town where a coffee shop barista starts a conversation about last night’s game, and no one cares what Barry Bonds says or does.
• Yes, I’ll still be blogging. All the usual disclaimers apply: This is my space for my thoughts and my opinions. No place of business or educational institution is responsible for what I write here.
• Speaking of education, yes, I’m still working on my thesis.
• A note to j-school students: Blogging about what you’re passionate about gets you work that you’re passionate about. Mr. Lebowski asked me to repeat that. Blogging about what you’re passionate about gets you work that you’re passionate about.

Conveniently enough, I’ll be in New York for a couple weeks, so I’ll be at the Networked Journalism Summit in NYC on October 10th. See you there, or in Fairport, or around town in Santa Cruz.