Paxton Media Group has named television news veteran Jillianne Moncrief as editor of The Jonesboro Sun.
Moncrief was previously the morning executive news producer at WPSD-TV, a Paxton-owned television station in Paducah, Kentucky. The media chain is based there.
At 26, she is the youngest chief editor of The Sun in recent memory.
A native of McLemoresville, Tennessee, Moncrief started at WPSD as its web editor and became a news producer in 2021. She took the executive producer position last year, the Sun reported.
She told Arkansas Business in a telephone interview that she was not apprehensive about switching from broadcasting to newspaper journalism. “The job [of getting out the news] is all the same; one’s on the air and one’s in print,” Moncrief said.
She will oversee a newsroom staff of about four, she said.
‘Happy to Be Here’
She earned her bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Tennessee at Martin in 2020. Rudd was a part-time reporter there for the campus newspaper, The Pacer. She also worked extensively with the campus radio station, WUTM-FM, where she won several regional and national awards. Her radio professor, Richard Robinson, is a Conway native and graduate of what is now the University of Central Arkansas.
“I’m happy to be here,” Moncrief said. “We moved here for my stepson. He goes to school in Paragould, and it was very convenient, very lucky, for me to be able to transfer over.”
She succeeds Gretchen Hunt, who is no longer with the paper.
“It looks like [the job] is going to be fun, and I’m excited to be a part of the community, and to help get important information out,” Moncrief said.
The Sun’s website on Friday still listed Hunt as editor, but it also listed other newsroom staffers who have departed, including Nena Zimmer. Zimmer has been chief reporter at the online news outlet Jonesboro Right Now since September.
JRN Hires A-State Graduate
The online news source, led by Jonesboro Radio Group President Trey Stafford, hired Rachel Rudd as its editor-in-chief in October. Rudd replaced Rachel Anderson, the founding editor-in-chief, who accepted a job in the marketing and communications office at the Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.
Rudd, a 2024 A-State graduate with a creative media major and a multimedia journalism minor,
“I worked with Rachel for two consecutive years on The Herald, our on-campus student-run newspaper,” said Sandra Combs, associate professor of multimedia journalism and faculty adviser for The Herald at A-State. “The second year Rachel was our editor. She is so passionate about news.”
Rudd, a native of Beebe, had a multifaceted college journalism career. She was a routine winner in the Arkansas College Media Association’s journalism competition. This year, she took first place in in-depth news writing, online news writing, online feature writing and best online news photo. In 2023, she took first place in election/political coverage and in-depth news.
“I am so thrilled to be starting this position,” Rudd said in a news release announcing her hiring. “I can’t wait to see how I learn and grow here at JRN and am excited to continue my editing and reporting career.”
Stafford said he watched how Rudd directed The Herald in the months before Jonesboro Right Now’s launching. “There is no doubt in my mind that Rachel and her team will carry out our mission of providing Jonesboro and Craighead County a quality hyperlocal news service,” he said.
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