A former News Journal reporter has come home to assume the mantle as publisher.
Jennifer K. Perkins assumed the publisher duties on Monday. She becomes the fourth publisher in the News Journal’s 39-year history and the first woman to fill the role.
Perkins succeeds Trevor Sherman who took over as publisher in 2025.
This is not Perkins’s first time working for The News Journal. It’s not even her second time, for that matter. In 2018, she joined the staff as a Kentucky Press Association Intern. She later returned to the newspaper full-time as a reporter and the People’s editor in 2020.
In 2022, she moved to Hazard to work as a producer, and after nine month, she was promoted to news director at WYMT-TV becoming both the youngest and the first woman to lead the newsroom.
“Jennifer is the perfect person for the publisher’s job. She has both management and news experience,” said The News Journal Managing News Editor Mark White.
“She also has fresh new ideas, including some ways for the new website we are launching to make us some additional revenue.”
To read comments from Perkins related to this transition, see her ‘How are things in your world?’ column.
