New editor is committed to community news

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This week, a new name makes its way into the pages of The Riverdale Press as the community newspaper welcomes a new editor: Michael Hinman.

Although born and raised in rural Pennsylvania, Hinman spent nearly his entire adult life in Florida, primarily working with various publications in the Tampa Bay region. However, he earned his first full-time gig as sports editor of the Steuben Courier-Advocate in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York in the mid-1990s.

Hinman made the switch to news reporting, primarily local government, in 1997, for the Zephyrhills News, a small city just north of Tampa. He would later join the Sunbelt Newspaper division owned by The Tampa Tribune, a group of award-winning community newspapers, working primarily as the editor of the Temple Terrace News, serving a city of 40,000 that also is the home to Busch Gardens Tampa Bay.

Later in his career, Hinman would join the Tampa Bay Business Journal as a reporter specializing in residential real estate and intellectual property. His series of stories on the failed Trump Tower Tampa would win him a top reporting award from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2008. 

Hinman spent time afterward at The Laker just north of Tampa as news editor of the small newspaper group, focused on government and business. He won the top awards for local government reporting and general news reporting from the Florida Press Association in 2014.

Hinman arrives in the Riverdale community with fresh legs after taking a two-year break living on the small island of Grenada in the south Caribbean Sea. He’s also made a name for himself in entertainment journalism, primarily covering television. Hinman also created the SyFy brand, which he sold to NBC Universal in 2009, and is now the name of a major cable channel.

“I am thrilled to have a journalist and editor of Michael’s caliber joining us at The Riverdale Press,” said Celia Weintrob, general manager of the newspaper, in a statement. “His background at community papers across the United States is impressive, and we look forward to familiarizing him with the northwest Bronx.”

Readers can help, Weintrob added, by calling him at (718) 543-6065, Ext. 374, or emailing him at mhinman@riverdalepress.com.

The first editor of The Riverdale Press, of course, was its founder, David A. Stein, and continued with son Bernard Stein, who also shared the publisher title with his brother, Richard Stein. Bernard Stein would win The Press the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for editorial writing.

“I expect future issues of The Press, starting with this one, to be compelling reads,” Weintrob added.

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