Russell, Mark

Aspirations for ASNE

I'm ecstatic to be running for an ASNE board position at a time when our industry is being rapidly transformed by the digital revolution. ASNE has long promoted quality journalism, diversity in its ranks, improved skills and leadership training for editors. I have been an ASNE member since 2005, and have been involved in planning conference panels, brainstorming industry solutions on diversity, digital innovation and management challenges. I have also served as a mentor to a dozen men and women throughout the field. And I want to bring the same passion, ideas and collaborative thinking to ASNE in preparing the premier journalists' organization for a future rife with challenge but infused with opportunity to reach new readers across platforms. If elected, I promise to help ASNE cement its place as the clearinghouse of good ideas and resourceful thinking on how to move the industry forward.

Career

Appointed editor of the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel in October 2010, Russell, 48, was previously assistant managing editor/metro at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, the largest newspaper in Ohio. Russell’s title changed to Print News Manager in 2009. At The Plain Dealer, Russell also was its business editor for four years. He joined the newspaper in 1987 as a business reporter and later moved to the city desk and then served as an assistant city editor. Russell left The Plain Dealer to join The Boston Globe as assistant metropolitan editor in 1993, a position he held for two years before returning to The Plain Dealer.

Earlier in his career, Russell was a staff reporter for three years in The Wall Street Journal’s Cleveland and Pittsburgh bureaus.

Russell currently serves as a director of the Florida Society of News Editors and the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies at North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro, N.C. He also is president of the board of directors of the Missourian Publishing Association, which oversees the Missouri journalism school’s daily newspaper and advises the school’s dean, and he was the founding director of the Cleveland Urban Journalism Workshop, a program started in 1989 by the local chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Russell and his wife, Christina, have a 21-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter.

ASNE Activities

An ASNE member since 2005, Russell is currently on the ASNE Awards Board and Convention Program Committee. He has also served on the Leadership Development and Readership Issues committees.