Sweet Home Alabama   

Melinda Gorham, who knew she wanted to work at the Huntsville Times when she left college, reaches the top rung of the Times' newsroom more than 20 years later.

Alabama native Melinda Gorham lands the top newsroom job at Newhouse's Huntsville Times 22 years after starting out as the paper's bureau chief in her home county of Jackson. Gorham, 44, who says she set her sights on the Times when she graduated from college in 1979, recalls her "inner struggle" over whether to give up reporting before she became features editor, one of many jobs she's held at the paper. "I just love the thrill of the interview and the thrill of the chase and trying to get people to open up to me," says the former managing editor. Now her goal is attracting new readers in the high-tech community, whose primary employers are the U.S. military, NASA and their contractors, and whose residents come from all over the country and around the world. The best stories, Gorham says, are those "you anticipate and you help your readers anticipate," such as a series the paper ran on urban sprawl. And, she adds, "We try to never forget the importance and the sheer joy of telling a story well."