By Don Lee | BGNAS board member
Three BGSU people, including two BG News alumni and one faculty member — have had a hand in bringing a part of Toledo’s journalism landscape back to life.
Former BG News Editor Brandi Barhite (BA, 2001 and MA, 2011) and Dr. Bailey Dick, assistant professor of journalism, were part of a five-person board that helped publisher Tom Pounds find funding to resurrect the Toledo Free Press as an online publication.
And Don Lee, who was BG News editorial cartoonist from 1984 until his graduation in 1987, returns as TFP editorial cartoonist. He had been cartooning, illustrating and occasionally reporting for TFP from 2012 to 2015. He’s one of three cartoonists contributing to the site’s “Humorists” section.
The Toledo Free Press closed down in 2015 after a 10-year run as Toledo’s alternative news and arts weekly.
Barhite, now director of enrollment communications at the University, was a reporter, features editor and columnist for the TFP after leaving the Sandusky Register, where Lee had been a reporter, editor and editorial cartoonist for 25 years.
Dr. Dick, who has a bachelor’s degree from Loyola and a masters and PhD from Ohio University, had been a TFP intern.
Barhite and Lee are also members of the BG News and Falcon Media Alumni Society Board.
BGSU student journalists can expect to find a welcoming and guiding hand at the TFP in preparing them for a journalism career.
“We will mentor and hire journalism students from Bowling Green, the University of Toledo and Hillsdale College in our intern program. We will also look to incorporate area high schools in the area. We will be committed training future storytellers,” publisher Pounds said in announcing the paper’s revival at toledofreepress.com.