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The Baltimore Sun Executive Profiles

Timothy E. Ryan
Publisher, President and Chief Executive Officer

Timothy (Tim) E. Ryan became publisher, president, and chief executive officer of The Baltimore Sun Company in 2007, after having served as vice president of circulation and consumer marketing since 2005 at the Chicago Tribune. There, Ryan had responsibility for the sales, marketing and distribution to Chicago Tribune subscribers and retail customers throughout Chicago and the Midwest. Ryan's management responsibilities included oversight of RedEye, the rapidly growing young-adult oriented edition of Chicago Tribune.

Prior to joining the Chicago Tribune, Ryan served as vice president of circulation and operations at The Baltimore Sun from July 2000 to February 2005. Ryan also worked as vice president of circulation at the Philadelphia Inquirer from June 1993 to June 2000.

Ryan started his career at Chicago Tribune in 1982, serving in a variety of circulation management positions. Ryan received the Tribune Company Management Award in 1992 for his leadership of the team that developed a ZIP-code based advertising zone structure.

A native of Rochester, N.Y., Ryan holds a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Notre Dame and a master's degree in business administration from J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University.

Tim Franklin, Editor and Senior Vice President

Tim Franklin was named editor and senior vice president of The Baltimore Sun, Maryland's largest news organization, in January 2004.

During Franklin's tenure, The Sun has won dozens of national and regional journalism awards, including two National Headliner Awards this year. The Sun earned more than 20 national journalism awards in 2007, including the prestigious Polk Award for medical reporting, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, the Loeb Award for business/economics reporting, the Society of Professional Journalists Award for Washington correspondence, Columbia University's Mike Berger Award for human interest reporting and seven awards of excellence from the Society of News Design. The Sun was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in local reporting, and for the Associated Press Managing Editors Public Service Award. The Sun was named the "Newspaper of the Year" in 2006 and 2007 by the Maryland/Delaware/D.C. Press Association. In 2005, Franklin led a comprehensive redesign of The Sun, which was honored, with the Award of Excellence by the Society of Newspaper Design.

Before joining The Sun, Franklin was the editor and vice president of the Orlando Sentinel for three years. During that time, the Sentinel won more than two dozen national journalism awards, including the Polk Award for environmental reporting, the Scripps Howard Distinguished Service to the First Amendment Award for its investigation into NASCAR racing safety, the National Journalism Award for literacy from the Scripps Howard Foundation, a national Society of Professional Journalist Award for non-deadline reporting, and a National Headliner Award for investigative reporting in collaboration with The Sun. In 2003, the Sentinel won the highest journalism honor from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors for its coverage of the Columbia space shuttle tragedy.

Franklin's first top editor job was at his home state newspaper, The Indianapolis Star, a paper he led in 2000. In his year there, The Star won a national Polk Award for state reporting for an investigation into Indiana's "shockingly inadequate oversight" of its mentally ill patients. Franklin also led a redesign of the paper and a reorganization of its newsroom staff.

Previously, Franklin spent 17 years as a reporter and editor for the Chicago Tribune. His reporting assignments included Cook County government, Chicago City Hall and the Illinois Statehouse. He then rose through the editing ranks from assistant city editor to associate managing editor.

Franklin is active in First Amendment and freedom of information issues. In April, Franklin will become co-chairman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Freedom of Information Committee. He took the leading role in organizing the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors' first "Sunshine Sunday" public awareness campaign for open government in 2002. That effort was honored with the Society of Professional Journalists "Sunshine Award," and his efforts also were recognized by the First Amendment Foundation. That initial "Sunshine Sunday" effort in Florida has blossomed into a national public awareness campaign by ASNE.

Franklin was a Pulitzer Prize jurist in 2006 and 2007, and has judged several other national journalism contests. He also has lectured at the American Press Institute. Earlier this year, Franklin was named one of the most influential Marylanders by The Daily Record.

Franklin holds a bachelor's degree from Indiana University, where he majored in journalism and political science. In 1981, he won the Society of Professional Journalists' Barney Kilgore Award as the top college journalism student in the nation. In 2000, he endowed a journalism scholarship at his alma mater. He has been a member of the Board of Visitors of the University of Maryland School of Journalism since 2004.

Judy Berman, Senior Vice President, Marketing

Judy Berman joined The Baltimore Sun as senior vice president, marketing in February 2008. Prior to joining The Sun, Judy was the director of consumer sales and marketing for the Chicago Tribune with responsibility for both acquiring and retaining subscribers as well as single copy purchasers and News in Education participants.

Prior to joining Tribune Company, she worked for Dow Jones/The Wall Street Journal for 13 years in various marketing and operations positions, most recently as the director of circulation field operations. In that capacity she was responsible for sales and distribution relationships with 170 local newspapers and the launch of The Wall Street Journal's Weekend Edition in September 2005. Prior to Dow Jones, Berman had a successful career in direct marketing, working for companies such as AIG Insurance and MBNA America Bank.

Berman is a native of the Philadelphia area and a graduate of Bryn Mawr College. She holds an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA.

Robert Blau, Managing Editor

Robert Blau joined The Sun in 2004, having previously servedas associate managing editor for projects and investigations at the Chicago Tribune. During his six years in that role, Blau edited six Pulitzer Prize finalists, including the Tribune's 2001 Pulitzer winning series "Gateway to Gridlock," which chronicled the frailties and frustrations of air travel in America.

As a reporter, he was named a Pulitzer finalist in 1997 for a series called "Gambling with Life," an examination of why people around the world have children they cannot afford to raise. Blau also played a leading reporting role in the Tribune's award-winning "Killing Our Children" series, which documented the slaying of every Chicago-area child under the age of 15, and wrote "The Cop Shop," a memoir of his years as a police reporter on the streets of Chicago.

Blau received his bachelors degree from the State University of New York at Albany, and his masters degree in journalism from Columbia University. In 1997, he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

Linda Hastings, Vice President, Advertising

Linda Hastings joined The Baltimore Sun as vice president, advertising, in 2007 to oversee the 100-member advertising department. Previously, she served as publisher of Today's Local News, a daily newspaper in San Diego, Calif., owned by Copley Press. Prior to that, she was the owner and publisher of Loot, a weekly classified publication distributed through more than 2,700 newsstands in five New York boroughs.

Hastings has an extensive background in newspaper advertising and media management, with successful stints at The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), Long Island's Newsday, The New York Daily News and The Orlando Sentinel, among others, in a career spanning more than 30 years.

Stephen G. Seidl, Senior Vice President, Operations and Technology

Steve Seidl was named Senior Vice President, Operations and Technology in March 2008. In this capacity he leads the team responsible for the publishing and business systems, preprint and print production, inserting, distribution, and delivery of The Sun. Prior to this he served as Vice President of Operations since 2005, and in various other operations leadership roles since joining The Sun in 1998. Before coming to The Sun, he worked for Harte-Hanks Shoppers in Southern California for 8 years in various directors positions throughout operations. Seidl began his professional career in 1983 as assistant production manager for Dow Jones, working at three of its Wall Street Journal production facilities around the country.

Seidl is a native of the Dayton, Ohio area and earned his Bachelor of Science degree in printing management and printing technology from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. He is currently enrolled in the MBA program at Loyola College.

Erik A. Smist, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Erik A. Smist was named vice president and chief financial officer in 2007, after having served as controller for The Baltimore Sun since 1998.

Smist joined The Sun in 1986 as a district manager in the Circulation department, where he worked until joining the Finance department in 1992. Smist, a Certified Public Accountant, received his undergraduate degree from University of Maryland College Park in 1985 and a Certificate of Accounting from the University of Baltimore in 1993.

Tim Thomas, Vice President of Business Development

Tim Thomas joined The Sun in 1999. Thomas leads the team responsible for strategic planning, market research, advertiser marketing, media relations, ad art, media planning/development, promotion, media sponsorships, creative services, and consumer events. He leads The Sun's community affairs program, which supports more than 100 local charities annually. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Maryland Delaware DC Press Association, the Independent College Fund of Maryland and Center Stage.

Before joining The Sun, Thomas worked for 15 years at Westinghouse/Northrop Grumman in various operations, research, strategy and business development positions, eventually leading the company's package sorting systems business. He also worked for a Baltimore market research firm and Towson University's School of Business and Economics.

Thomas graduated at the top of his class with a masters of business administration from Loyola College, where he is a member of the Alpha Sigma Nu academic honor society. He also earned an undergraduate degree in mass communications (journalism) from Towson University.

Tim Windsor, Vice President of Interactive

Tim Windsor, who had been deputy general manager of The Baltimore Sun's online division since 2002, was named general manager in 2005. Windsor has been with the interactive division at The Sun since 1996, when he joined the original team of five that launched the site in the fall of that year. During his time at baltimoresun.com, he has worked on both the editorial side, where he directed design and editorial staffs, and the business side, where he had responsibility for marketing and product development. Before joining The Baltimore Sun, Windsor worked as an advertising creative director, public relations account executive and at WJZ-TV as an assignment editor.

Windsor earned his bachelor of arts degree in English at Western Maryland (now McDaniel) College in 1981.