Updates on Matt Stearns, Josh Flory
Matt Stearns has left his beat at the Kansas City Star for a national general assignment role at McClatchy’s Washington Bureau. Matt’s successor on the Kansas City beat is Rob Hotakainen, who comes from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Rob has been at McClatchy’s Washington Bureau since 1999, and worked in the newsroom in Minneapolis from 1986-1998.
Josh Flory, formerly of the Columbia Daily Tribune, is at the Knoxville News-Sentinel, where he covers business. Josh recently started latinista.net, which focuses on Latin American news. Today’s news roundup: “Rappers, liberals and high-speed wireless.”
For what it’s worth — and to me, it’s worth a lot — Josh was the first reporter to mention a Missouri political blog in print. He did it in August 2003, two years before the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Kansas City Star started their blogs. At the time, other reporters used sites like mine for information but either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, push Internet references past their stodgy old editors. Josh did, and eventually other papers followed suit.
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