Nicole Stockdale has been named executive editor of The News & Observer and the Herald-Sun, McClatchy publications located in the Triangle area of North Carolina, effective February 17.
Stockdale replaces Bill Church, who left the Triangle last year and is now executive editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican, The News & Observer reports.
The News & Observer is based in Raleigh.
Stockdale was chosen for the job because of her “visionary leadership, strategic acumen and collaborative nature,” says Robyn Tomlin, who oversees news operations for McClatchy throughout the country.
“This was a tough decision,” Tomlin said in a virtual staff meeting. “We had an extraordinarily large and talented pool of candidates, people who really wanted to be the editor of The News & Observer, and that’s really a testament to all of you,”
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Stockdale joined McClatchy as a senior managing editor for the firm’s five California papers in 2022, based at the Sacramento Bee.
Prior to that, she worked at the Dallas Morning News, where she helped move the newsroom from print to digital. Her husband, Corbett Smith, also joined that paper. At the start of her career, Stockdale served as a copy editor at The Wichita Eagle.
During the meeting, Tomlin praised Thad Ogburn and Elizabeth Walters for guiding the paper after Church’s departure through the fall election and Hurricane Helene.