A new editor will take the helm of The Greenfield Recorder beginning next week, continuing a 227-year succession that began in 1792 with editor Thomas Dickman. Starting Monday, veteran community journalist Joan Livingston will assume leadership of the paper’s news operations, taking control of both the print and the digital editions of the Recorder.
Livingston is succeeding George Forcier, who is retiring after 39 years at the paper, the last four years as its top editor.
Livingston, who lives in Shelburne Falls where she has been renovating a home with her husband on the Buckland side of the village, most recently was the managing editor of The Taos News, a high-quality, weekly newspaper in Taos, New Mexico. She worked there for 10 years, including eight as editor orchestrating the coverage of life in Taos County, a region of 32,000.
“When we moved to Franklin County, I was pleased to find a newspaper so dedicated to community news,” Livingston said. “The Greenfield Recorder gives residents the information they need to make informed decisions about their communities as well as sharing stories about the area’s enterprising people. I look forward to leading that coverage.”
“We’re lucky that Joan is joining us,” Publisher Aaron Julien said after introducing Livingston to the staff Friday. “It’s clear to me she understands and enjoys the DNA of the Recorder and Franklin County.”
Forcier, who has been responsible for the Recorder’s news coverage in various editing roles since 1980, has agreed to stay on in a supporting role while Livingston gets her bearings.
“Our roots here at the Recorder are deep, reaching back into Franklin County’s earliest colonial history, and we care deeply about the people of Franklin County, our neighbors,” said Forcier. “Joan will become the most recent steward of a local news operation that has served our region faithfully for so many generations, and I have great confidence that she has the journalism background and personal qualities to carry our work forward.”
Livingston started her journalism career as a news correspondent covering Hampshire County hilltowns for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, moving into the full-time reporter ranks and then was promoted to be a news editor for the Easthampton area. She later moved to Taos where her talents and skill were quickly recognized and she was promoted to lead its newsroom staff as managing editor. Having moved back to the Pioneer Valley to be closer to family, Livingston has lived in Franklin County for about 18 months. She will lead a team of reporters, editors and photographers in Greenfield and will play a general oversight and supporting role for the Recorder’s sister paper in Athol, which has its own staff and editor but shares some North Quabbin news and features with the Recorder.
“I have every confidence that Joan, as the paper’s newest editor, will continue our strong tradition of providing readers with quality local journalism,” said Forcier. “I feel assured as I retire after four decades of serving the county’s readers, knowing that Joan will also seek to fulfill the promise made by our first editor in our first publication all those years ago, when he wrote “… the Editor of this paper can only assure the publick, that his greatest exertions shall be employed to make it the earliest informer of every important intelligence, whether foreign or domestick …”