Who makes newsroom decisions?

Editor's Notes

Every day, our newsroom on the second floor of the brick building at 10th and A streets buzzes with the drone of the fax machine, printers, police scanners and telephones. By mid-afternoon, about 20 people turn up the volume as they head into deadlines, conducting phone interviews, processing the day’s photos, writing and talking about stories and designing pages.

But at 2 p.m. every day, a group of us gathers in a meeting room to plot improvement strategy.

Remember last May 1 when we changed to a tabloid format? That took a few months of plotting. And yes, we have more unique changes in the works. But more of that in May.

While readers have met some of the folks who write the stories and take the photos for the Tracy Press, they may not know the editors who make many of the decisions that affect what goes into the newspaper. So here’s an introduction to the team.

• City Editor Eric Firpo, 42, is in charge of daily news coverage, and he supervises seven news reporters, including the San Joaquin News Service, which has an office in the newsroom. If you were to call the Tracy Press with a story tip, you would likely find Eric at the other end of the phone. He knows news, and every night, he’s hard at work at his computer getting the first critical read on stories from the reporters.

• Managing Editor Tonya Luiz, 27, is in charge of newsroom operations, including a universal copy desk of five copy editors who design and produce pages, write headlines and captions and edit copy for the six-day Tracy Press. She’s a quality-control person, who flinches when she sees misspellings, typos or fact errors. She’s also our design guru, and she can tell you exactly what font we use where and why we decided to redesign our paper last spring.

• Jack Eddy, 53, has been at the Tracy Press has worked as news editor, sports editor and now associate editor in the 27 years he’s been at the Press. He is in charge of the Voice pages, writing editorials, editing columns and letters to the editor and leading editorial board meetings. He’s one of the few folks in the newsroom who is allowed to voice his opinion. Plus he writes a wine column.

• Our Town Editor Jack Elliott, 51, oversees dozens of volunteer columnists in Tracy, writes a column called “Thinking Out Loud,” interviews people for weekly profiles and coordinates coverage for the Saturday section. As a human resources expert and ordained minister, he doesn’t have a traditional journalism background like the rest of us. But he knows how to connect us with readers like you.

• Finally, in sports, James Leonard, 24, is the Tracy Press Play editor. He coordinates our sports coverage, which includes everything from youth baseball, high school softball and professional soccer games to racing and rodeo and recreation — as well as stories and scores from the Associated Press wire. He oversees three sports reporters and also finds time to write a parenting column.

Cheri Matthews, 40-something, is editor of the Tracy Press.