I own The Sun, a locally focused newspaper that stays true to what a newspaper should be—delivering the news. While many newspapers have drifted into event organizing, award-giving, or even television, I’ve worked hard to keep The Sun a real newspaper. Whether in print or online, our job is to report the news that matters to our community. I want to mention, too, that I don’t actually run the paper day to day anymore; that has been turned over to Drew and Stephanie.

My late wife, Debbie, and I bought The Sun in 2007 because we knew how important it was to this area. We saw tremendous potential, especially since the paper didn’t even have a website at the time. A big mistake the newspaper industry made—and continues to make—is giving away content for free. We didn’t fall into that trap. From day one, we charged for access to our website, and that decision has helped make us a strong, profitable business.

One of the biggest turning points for The Sun was in 2008, just after we bought the paper. A gas leak caused the East End Diner to explode—right down the street from us—on a Wednesday, the very day we go to press.

The old version of The Sun wouldn’t have had the capacity to stop production, rework the entire issue, and still get the paper out on time. But we did. Our coverage was better than anyone else's, and from that moment on, people stopped seeing us as just a small-town newspaper and started taking us seriously.

Another defining moment was simply making it through the 2008 recession. We bought the paper right before the economy crashed, which, in hindsight, wasn’t the best timing. National advertising revenue disappeared overnight, and we were scrambling to stay afloat. I had to get creative with finances just to make it work. But we did more than survive—those months and years caused us to figure some things out and we learned to thrive with different revenue sources.

Know what your product is. It’s easy to get distracted, especially when things get tough, but the businesses that succeed are the ones that stay true to what they do best. Newspapers have struggled because they forgot they were newspapers. They stopped focusing on the news and started trying to be everything else. That doesn’t work. Stick to what you do well.

"You decide."
That’s the management philosophy I’ve built The Sun around. When my team comes to me with a question about how to handle something, my answer is almost always, you decide. If I’ve hired you, I trust you to make decisions. It took some of them a while to get used to that, but it’s made us a stronger team.

Giving back is important to me, and now that The Sun is in a stronger position, we’ve been able to do more. This year, we launched the Debbie Grants, a scholarship program in honor of my late wife. We’re giving $1,000 each to students pursuing careers in nursing and journalism—two fields that meant a lot to her and me.

The grants are open to students from our three local school districts, as well as Milton Hershey School and Dauphin County Technical School. We’ve also had generous local businesses, like Chocolates by Tina Marie, join in to support these scholarships.

At first, I was just making a job for myself, which is often the case when you start a business. But it quickly became clear to Debbie and me that The Sun provided a service this community needed. That’s even more obvious today.

News deserts are becoming a serious problem, and The Sun is now the only newspaper published in Dauphin County. I take that responsibility seriously.

You know those Most Interesting Man in the World ads for Dos Equis? Well, I’m the opposite of that. I’m probably the least interesting man in the world. I come to work, go home, eat good food, play with my dogs, and spend time with my kids. And I’m perfectly happy with that.