As of today, Stephen George is new editor of LEO.

“It’s not the way I would have envisioned it going down, and the newspaper suffered a loss,” he said, referring to his mentor Cary Stemle’s firing. “The spirit of the paper will be consistent with what it was.”

He said a news editor will be joining the staff in about a month, and that Phillip Bailey has been hired as a staff writer. Sara Havens earns a new title - entertainment editor, while Mat Herron will continue as music editor. He said he plans to bring in some new voices, i.e. writers, to the freelance corps. And he assured me the paper’s media critic (yours truly) will be retained. Yippee!

George said a re-design of the paper, already underway, will continue and that plans for a new website (with a new philosophy) is in the works as well.