To all staff, collaborators and readers of The Sacramento Press.

I would like to briefly introduce our new Editor in Chief, Colleen Belcher.

For most of you, Colleen needs no introduction because she has personally worked with literally hundreds of contributors and everyone on our small staff. You all know her glowing smile and her indefatigable spirit.

Colleen started working as an intern at The Sacramento Press even before there was a live website. I remember how instrumental she was at setting the tone with that first group of interns and staff. She created a sense of camaraderie with her fellow interns while setting a very hardworking pace for all of us continue to follow.

We hired Colleen as a resource coordinator for our growing volunteer community. Her work greatly increased the quality and quantity of contributions. Her roles included creating and running journalism workshops, coordinating copy editing and assigning media passes.

For the past year and a half, Colleen has been our Managing Editor. She makes sure that there is quality content on our front page every day. This may sound routine, but those of you who read our site when we first started out know better.

There is a huge difference between words on a website and compelling local news and information. Additionally, volunteer contributions often come in waves, so daily consistency is hard to achieve. Colleen has improved our content and consistency so greatly, it is almost impossible to look back.

I would say I don’t know how she does it, but that’s not true – I know precisely how she does it because she wrote down her process as part of her job. She contributed heavily to a handbook on our operations that outlines everything that goes into making this site possible.

Colleen has been instrumental to our success at every level. She has worked with amateurs, interns and professionals and faced down “the daily beast” here at The Sacramento Press. Inside our office and well beyond, Colleen is respected and loved.

So it is with much pleasure that I introduce her to you as our new Editor in Chief, a title she has earned over the course of three amazing years.