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Vermont’s two leading newspapers, the Burlington Free Press and the Rutland Herald, name new top editors.

Vermont's two leading newspapers, the Burlington Free Press and the Rutland Herald, name new top editors. Mike Townsend, 49, moves into the executive editor's chair at the Gannett-owned Free Press after three years as managing editor at the company's Des Moines Register. "Vermont is everything you expect it to be," says Townsend, a hiker and early American history buff. "The villages are drop-dead gorgeous; [it's] an incredible environment." As for the paper, he plans to do what he says he always does: focus on tight writing, strong photography, graphics and presentation, and create an environment for consistent investigative reporting. Located in the state's fastest-growing county, the 50,000-weekday circulation paper is well-positioned, he says, to outperform the 22,000-circulation Rutland Herald, which is considered by more than a few observers to offer better state coverage. The Herald's cachet increased this spring when it won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing (see Free Press, June). And in more recent Herald news, Stephen W. Baumann prevails over what he says was a tough audition. He worked six months as acting managing editor--the Herald's top editorial job, which he'd applied for and wanted big-time--while his boss, Publisher John Mitchell, considered about two dozen other applicants for the position. Baumann, 50, started at the Herald as a stringer with no news experience and no college degree in 1978, and by 1991 had become assistant managing editor.