Editor’s Note
Back in the old days — that’s less than a decade and before there were such things as blogs and interactive conversations with readers — editors used to respond to their newspaper readers with an “editor’s note.” Sometimes it clarified a point made in a letter to the editor. Sometimes it offered a correction. Sometimes it was just a simple explanation. An editor’s note was a handful of sentences; maybe a four or five paragraphs. It was always a personal link between the editor and the reader. Only difference between it and today’s blog is the immediacy and the platform. Welcome to Editor’s Note.

Blogger bio

Linda Grist Cunningham is executive editor of the Rockford Register Star. She was named to that position in May 1991, after serving three years as executive editor of the Daily Record of Morris County, New Jersey.

During her more than three-decade newspaper career, she has worked as a reporter, copy editor, wire editor, editorial page editor and assistant managing editor at newspapers in Virginia and New Jersey. In 1981, she was named executive editor of the Hudson Dispatch and the Paterson News, both New Jersey newspapers.

In 1982, she was also named executive editor and vice president of news of The Times of Trenton, N.J., a position she held until 1988, when she joined the Daily Record.

She is a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and a former member of its national board. She is active in the industry through APME and ASNE. She is a regular discussion leader for the American Press Institute. She has served as a judge for writing contests sponsored by ASNE, Scripps-Howard, and Gannett and has been a juror for the Pulitzer Prize. She received a Gannett President’s Ring in 1995 and in 2007 for outstanding performance. In 1999, she was named Illinois Journalist of the Year by Northern Illinois University. In 2002, she was elected to the Marshall University Journalism Hall of Fame.

She is a 1972 cum laude graduate of Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va., and is active in community and civic affairs in Rockford.

She and her husband, Ed, who works for Commonwealth Edison, have a son, Lee, who is an editorial designer for the Atlanta Business Chronicle.