Managing editor's role touches every area of the newsroom

Managing Editor Jim Baumann oversees newsroom operations for the Daily Herald and provides oversight for editors in the company's eight weekly newspapers in central Illinois.

Jim also is a member of the editorial board and, as such, writes editorials and contributes to the paper's institutional voice.

He also writes the weekly Grammar Moses column, through which he tries mightily to find humor in the realm of grammar and usage.

Jim provides direction on the types of stories the Daily Herald pursues and shapes the front page every day.

There isn't a corner of the newsroom Jim doesn't stick his nose in from time to time.

Jim's first newspaper job was as an unpaid intern for the then-weekly Herald in Lake County. After a paid internship the next summer, Jim completed college and in 1985 started full-time work at the Daily Herald as a police reporter, covering at least 110 miles a night in his trusty Toyota Tercel.

He held a few reporting positions but quickly entered the editing ranks in 1990. Jim spent the first 28 years of his career as a bureau rat, pushing into new territories in DuPage County before establishing bureaus in Elgin and St. Charles. He was named managing editor in 2012.

Jim is a Distinguished Alumnus of Prospect High School and has won a variety of industry awards for reporting, editorial writing and, yes, Grammar Moses.