Mike Fuhrman

Mike Fuhrman says he inherited his love of newspapers from his grandmother, Bess Caton, who worked in the 1960s and 1970s in advertising for the now-defunct Daily Review in Clifton Forge, Va.

Fuhrman, 38, who has worked at newspapers since high school, is making his own mark on the industry. As editor of the Statesville (N.C.) Record & Landmark (daily circulation, 13,885), he is helping his paper’s transition into a multimedia operation.

The paper, which has a 13-person newsroom and a full-time Web content producer, also is partnering with four other dailies and two weeklies owned by Media General Inc. in Richmond, Va., on projects such as training.

Recently, Fuhrman, his Web content producer and a multimedia reporter from the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal, trained 30 people from the five daily newsrooms on writing for the Web and alternative story forms.

“You want your employees to always feel like they’re growing and improving,” says Fuhrman, who coordinates training for the five dailies and taught news writing classes at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia in 2002.

Fuhrman also is working with the other papers to create an emergency response plan, which editors could activate during a major news event,  that would dispatch reporters, photographers and Web content producers to help a sister paper covering the event.

Despite the Record & Landmark’s small size, it is making large gains in embracing a digital future. In August, it switched to a new Web publishing system, Ellington by Mediaphormedia (www.mediaphormedia.com), which makes posting stories online easier. One reporter now arrives at 6 a.m. each day to cover breaking news.

Publisher Tim Dearman says Fuhrman “understands the role the newspaper needs to serve in a changing environment. He is the best hire I’ve ever made, and I’ve been in the business a long time.”

Connections: Statesville Record & Landmark, 222 E. Broad St., Statesville, N.C. 28677, (704) 873-1451, mfuhrman@statesville.com

By Mary Lynn F. Jones