Newspaper Chain Fills New Corporate Post

IRVINE — Freedom Newspapers Inc. said Wednesday that Jonathan Segal, son of company president D.R. Segal, will be promoted to a new corporate post in which he will take charge of all Freedom community newspapers east of the Mississippi.

The move is part of a management reorganization that just began, a company official said.

Jonathan Segal will relinquish his current post as publisher of the Gaston Gazette in Gastonia, N.C., to fill one of two new senior vice president positions that the company’s directors have approved, said Joseph Barletta, Freedom’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Barletta said Segal, besides acting as publisher of the Gaston Gazette, had been a “senior publisher” with additional responsibility to oversee the management of four other Freedom papers in North Carolina.

As part of the corporate reorganization, Barletta said he has decided to do away with the senior publisher concept that forced certain publishers to divide their attention between putting out a paper and managing other publications in a region. “We never had anyone full time in an oversight capacity,” he said.

By having two new senior vice presidents, one in charge of all Freedom papers in the western half of the nation and the other in charge of all those in the East, Barletta said he hopes to achieve “closer, more effective management.”