From the PNA President Tim Williams, April 2005

News from the PNA President

I want you to join me in congratulating the following PNA staffers on their recent promotions: Corinna Vecsey Wilson to Senior Vice President for Operations, Connie McNamara to Executive Director of the PNA Foundation, Janet McNally to Vice President for Human Resources, Teri Henning to General Counsel and Melinda Condon to Director of Meetings and Association Services. I am proud of all of them and the commitment and skills that they bring to serving Pennsylvania newspapers. They represent well the overall excellence of your entire staff here at the PNA.

As part of our continuing strategic planning process, I have redoubled my effort to get out on the road to visit with you. It is to this end that the PNA Board of Directors recently approved another significant change at the PNA: the naming of a “number two” for me. The goal here was to ensure that while I am out on the road, we have smooth day-to-day management of this very busy environment that includes not only the trade association and the foundation functions, but also the hectic advertising sales and placement service business (“MANSI”).

So I am very pleased to announce that Corinna Vecsey Wilson has been promoted from the Vice President for Association Services and General Counsel to Senior Vice President for Operations. Corinna will be responsible for the day-to-day management of both the PNA and MANSI. She has worked at the PNA for five years, starting as General Counsel, answering our legal hotline and providing legal services for each of the three organizations here. She was promoted to management in 2002, and has done a great job for us.

In addition, Connie McNamara has been promoted to fill my position as Executive Director of the PNA Foundation. Connie has been the Director of the Foundation for the past four years, and has taken a good foundation and built it into one that is excellent, innovative, entrepreneurial and aggressive. Among many other things, Connie has expanded training opportunities, forged partnerships with national journalism organizations and extended the Foundation's work to educate the public on the importance of a free press.

In addition, we have “upgraded” the title for Janet McNally from Director to Vice President of Human Resources to more properly reflect the value that she brings to this organization.

Also, as a result of these changes, we have promoted Teri Henning from Media Law Counsel to General Counsel. And last but certainly not least, Melinda Condon, currently our Director of Meetings and Conventions, has been promoted to Director of Meetings and Association Services.

For those of you who don’t know Corinna, she grew up in a newspaper family of sportswriters, was a copy girl for the International Herald Tribune in Paris, a research assistant for a correspondent at The New Yorker, a news clerk in the Hartford bureau of the Associated Press and a reporter in the AP’s New York City bureau. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York in 1986, and with honors from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1992. She worked as an entertainment and media lawyer for Fredrikson & Byron, PA, a large corporate law firm in Minneapolis. She later practiced law in the Harrisburg office of Buchanan Ingersoll, PC, one of the 100 largest firms in the United States. She found the job with the PNA in a classified ad in The Patriot-News!

Connie has even better newspaper bona fides; she is an award-winning journalist with a newspaper career spanning more than two decades. She's won numerous awards for her reporting, and has free-lanced extensively for national publications. She spent the bulk of her career at The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, where she reported on a variety of beats. During her tenure as the federal court reporter there, she covered international drug networks and high-profile public corruption cases. She became an editor, and was responsible for the content and design of three popular features sections.

Many of you know Janet McNally from our Human Resources Network, which is designed to assist newspaper managers and supervisors in improving the management of the “people side” of their businesses. Janet has over 20 years of HR experience in the areas of employment and employee relations, compensation and benefits and training. She also has a consulting company, QualVantage, located in Camp Hill, PA. She is a Senior Human Resources professional (SPHR) and has a doctorate in Adult Education from Penn State. Janet is also an adjunct associate professor of Human Resources at Lebanon Valley College, where she teaches Human Resources, Staffing, and Performance Management.

Teri Henning has a sterling background: a B.A. from Bucknell University, a J.D. from Georgetown University and a distinguished legal career. She practiced law with Duane Morris LLP in its Wilmington office, and was a clinical instructor at the Penn State Dickinson School of Law in Carlisle. With the PNA for almost four years, Teri has brought a remarkable level of commitment and excellence to our legal services and advocacy.