Leadership

Naila-Jean Meyers, 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, First Vice President

Dan Spears
dspears@gannett.com

Dan Spears is the deputy sports strategist for Gannett’s Center for Community Journalism, focused on high school sports strategy for more than 100 mid-size and small newsrooms around the country in the USA TODAY Network.

He lives in Wilmington, N.C., where he was on staff at the StarNews 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 15 years, been a contest judge every year since 2014, was the Atlantic Coast region chair and the organization’s third vice president from 2018-20.

Paul Barrett, Second Vice President

Paul Barrett pbarrett@seattletimes.com

Paul Barrett has been The Seattle Times sports editor since August 2016. Since joining the Times in 2015, he has led the sports department of the second-largest newsroom on the West Coast to three APSE Grand Slams and two triple crowns.

Paul started his first full-time newspaper job in 1989 as a preps reporter at the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, while also a full-time student at Washington State University.

Since then he’s worked at daily newspapers of all sizes in various areas of the country as a reporter, editor, designer and manager, including stints as night sports editor at The Arizona Republic and Miami Herald.

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.