New newsroom leadership named for The Telegraph

The Telegraph has named two new editors to lead its day-to-day operations.

Blake Kaplan, a journalist from Gulfport, Mississippi, is the paper’s new regional executive editor.

Caleb Slinkard, a journalist from El Dorado, Arkansas, will soon become the paper’s senior editor.

“Caleb and I look forward to helping break a lot of news in the Macon area,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan, a graduate of Louisiana State University, has worked for the Sun Herald newspaper on the Mississippi Gulf Coast for the last 25 years. He’s currently the paper’s executive editor and general manager. He has won numerous reporting awards over his career, and was part of a team that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

In his new role, effective immediately, Kaplan will be the executive editor of three papers: The Telegraph, the Sun Herald, and the Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus, Georgia. He will remain based in Mississippi, but travel to Georgia often.

Slinkard will move to Macon full-time and start his new job March 2.

Slinkard, a Texas A&M University-Commerce graduate, most recently served as managing editor of the El Dorado News-Times in Arkansas and executive editor of the Norman Transcript in Oklahoma. During his time in Norman, he was a journalism instructor at the University of Oklahoma. He also has won numerous reporting awards from the Oklahoma and Texas press associations.

In Macon, Slinkard will edit the stories produced by Telegraph reporters and select which stories lead the macon.com website or appear on the paper’s front page. He will be heavily involved in the Macon community.

“I can’t wait to move to Macon and get to work,” Slinkard said. “I’m excited about this opportunity to tell meaningful stories, to hold people in power accountable and to celebrate the positive things happening in the community.”

Said Kaplan: “We are lucky to have Caleb in Macon and our readers will soon see why. He has a strong track record of leading his newspaper staffs to excellence. I have every faith that he will do a great job for The Telegraph.”