Leadership

Jorge Rojas, President

Jorge Rojas is a deputy managing editor/college football for The Athletic, where he has worked since 2018.

Previously, Jorge was the longtime sports editor at the Miami Herald, where he worked for 24 years (14 as executive sports editor). He was an associate editor at The Sporting News and copy editor at the Orlando Sentinel before taking the job as an assistant sports editor in Miami.

Jorge’s work at the Herald included coordinating and supervising coverage of many big events — Super Bowls, NBA Finals, World Series, college football championships, NASCAR championships and seven Olympics — and several high-profile news stories, including the 2016 death of José Fernandez, which won national awards and was nominated for a Pulitzer. His sections consistently won APSE awards along with state, regional and national recognition.

A native of Miami and a 1985 journalism graduate from the University of Florida, Jorge has been a member of APSE since 2000. He served as the diversity chairman for more than a decade and has been a fixture on the Olympic, Commissioners and Futures committees. Along with Michael Anastasi, he helped launch the APSE Diversity Fellowship and was instrumental in securing a two-year, $31,500 grant from the Knight Foundation for the Fellowship in 2016.

Naila-Jean Meyers, First Vice President

Naila-Jean Meyers is the senior assistant sports editor at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, overseeing coverage of the Vikings/NFL and the Olympics and the department’s digital and audience strategy.

She joined the Star Tribune in January 2020 after 15 years as an editor and occasional reporter for The New York Times sports department, including stints as weekend sports editor, planning editor and assigning editor for NFL, tennis, baseball, hockey, golf and motorsports coverage. She also previously worked as a sports copy editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and an online editor at Sporting News.

Born in Washington, D.C., she grew up in Ames, Iowa, and is a graduate of Northwestern University.

Dan Spears, Second Vice President

Dan Spears is the high school sports content editor for Gannett’s 12 newsrooms in North Carolina and is based on out of the Wilmington StarNews, where he’s been on staff since 2006 in a host of roles, including sports editor, digital editor, photo editor and assistant news editor.

A native of Auburn, Ill., he previously was at the Anderson (S.C.) Independent-Mail; The Herald-Mail of Hagerstown, Md.; and The Augusta Chronicle after graduating from Truman State University in Missouri.

Dan has been involved in APSE for nearly 15 years, been a contest judge every year since 2014, and was previously chair of the Atlantic Coast region and the organization’s third vice president from 2018-20.

Dan.Spears@StarNewsOnline.com

Ed Reed, Third Vice President

Ed Reed is the Gannett Florida deputy sports editor. He has been based out of The News-Press in Fort Myers for more than 21 years. The transplanted Bostonian started as a staff writer at The News-Press and was promoted to assistant sports editor and then editor more than 13 years ago. During that time, he had additional roles as the breaking news editor for two years and business editor for six months. He shepherded The News-Press into increased digital and social media coverage as it moved from being print-focused to draw readers on mobile.

Before moving to Florida, Reed worked at his college’s Independent newspaper at Boston University, spent a year at the weekly Holyoke Sun in Massachusetts as sports editor and spent three years at the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Mass., where he juggled producing 3-4 weeklies along with daily writing duties.

The third vice president represents the interests from APSE’s smallest member organizations.

Bill Eichenberger, Executive Director

Bill Eichenberger
billapse707@gmail.com

Bill Eichenberger, sports editor at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is a former senior editor at Bleacher Report. He’s also served as New York sports editor at the Wall Street Journal and as sports editor at Newsday, the Akron Beacon Journal and Macon Telegraph.

He teaches journalism at UNLV and is a graduate of the University of Georgia. He was president of APSE for the 2003-04 term.

Glen Crevier, Conference Coordinator

Glen Crevier
gncrev66@gmail.com

Glen Crevier retired as assistant managing editor for sports at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis in 2018, a position he held since 1998.

He was previously sports editor at the News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., and the Santa Rosa (Calif.) Press Democrat. After graduating from Hiram (Ohio) College in 1975, he was a sports columnist for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Ariz., and the Sacramento Union.

Crevier has been involved with APSE since 1988, and he was president of the organization in 2005-06.