VTDigger has promoted Alicia Freese and Natalie Williams to key newsroom leadership positions, editor-in-chief Paul Heintz announced Thursday.
Freese has been named deputy managing editor. In that role, she will work closely with managing editor Maggie Cassidy to run Vermont’s largest newsroom on a day-to-day basis. Williams will serve as a senior editor, overseeing VTDigger’s visual, multimedia, podcasting and public engagement operations. She joins a team of senior editors that also includes Jim Welch, Tom Kearney and Diane Derby.
Freese is no stranger to VTDigger. She joined the fledgling nonprofit in 2012 as one of its first employees, reporting on state government and politics. Freese spent the next five years covering Burlington and then state government for Seven Days, before taking a break from journalism to teach English in Mexico. She returned to VTDigger in April 2022 and has spent most of the past year as interim senior editor, covering for Welch while he serves as interim executive director.
Williams joined VTDigger as news editor in March 2021 and became its digital editor a year later. The University of Vermont graduate previously served as digital editor and then visuals coordinator for the Bangor Daily News in Maine and held other reporting and editing positions in California.
“It says a lot about VTDigger’s deep bench of talent that we didn’t have to look far to find the best candidates for these jobs,” Heintz said. “Alicia and Natalie have distinguished themselves as journalists and become indispensable leaders at VTDigger. This team is well poised to deliver the kind of journalism our readers and all Vermonters have come to expect from us.”
The latest promotions round out a newsroom leadership team that has been in transition since November, when Heintz was named editor-in-chief and Cassidy managing editor. The board of trustees of the Vermont Journalism Trust, VTDigger’s nonprofit parent organization, is in the midst of a nationwide search for a new chief executive officer, who will succeed founder Anne Galloway as leader of the trust.
VTDigger is now looking for a digital editor to succeed Williams in that role.