David Knox, John Higgins leaving BJ

Posted on the BJ newroom bulletin board:

It is with mixed emotions that I share the news that John Higgins will be leaving us in August.

The good news is that John is the recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT. The bad news is that John is, well, leaving us.

This fellowship is a high honor that only a few experience. John is interested in how the brain of a young child changes as he or she begins and goes through the process of learning. He will be able to explore this subject in detail during his fellowship at MIT.

John will be missed in our newsroom. His name has appeared 2,547 times in the Beacon Journal since he joined the old night rewrite desk on June 24, 1997. Through his Beacon career John has:

• Covered crime and courts.
• Written about Stark County.
• Had the pleasure of being the Akron City Hall reporter.
• Carefully told the tragic story of a University of Akron student who took his own life.
• Shared the uplifting story of a youth basketball program that helped build character.
• Gotten to know a lot about how school budgets work in the state of Ohio and Akron.
• Reported on the impact of charter schools on public education.

John and Mary Ann have family in Washington State. At the conclusion of his fellowship, John hopes to move back there.

David Knox - our baseball bat-wielding, motorcycle-riding, datatbase expert Census numbers guy - has announced that he will be leaving the Beacon Journal on June 15. David, who also has been known to share an opinion every now and then over his 20-year career at the Beacon Journal, will become the new editor of the Medina Gazette.

While I wish David luck in his new job, his presence in the newsroom will be missed. Numbers make sense to him and David helps us all make sense of the numbers. 

 David has been involved in a number of significant stories, including the current America Today project and our in-depth look at the middle class in 2008. He participated in the Question of Color series. He also handles the U.S. Census numbers and our online election data.

David has been our computer-assisted reporting man\ger since 1999. He also has been a reporter in the Medina and Stark bureaus, a bureau chief and a substitute metro editor. He was able to land a spot in the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism at Ohio State University (not a bad gig).