New editor named in Maryville, Tenn.

J. Todd Foster

The Daily Times in Maryville, Tenn., has named veteran editor and reporter and native Tennessean J. Todd Foster as editor.

Foster succeeds Frank "Buzz" Trexler, who retired Nov. 30 after nearly three decades of leading The Daily Times' newsroom.

Foster rejoins Daily Times Publisher Carl Esposito nearly eight years after they both left the Bristol (Va.) Herald Courier, which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

"It's an honor to once again work with Carl and to inherit a talented newsroom so ably led by Buzz," Foster said.

Esposito said he and Foster worked in Bristol for nearly four years.

"We are fortunate to have attracted such an accomplished journalist and proven leader to succeed Buzz, and I certainly look forward to the opportunity of working with Todd again," added Esposito, who also is president of Adams Publishing Group's Tennessee and North Carolina operations.

In recent years, Foster has worked as a digital journalist and as a publications manager for half a dozen community magazines published by hibu, formerly the Yellowbook Co.

He was the executive editor of the Chattanooga Times-Free Press, and managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and The News Virginian in Waynesboro, Va.

Foster also was a reporter for People magazine; investigative, police and prisons reporter for The Oregonian in Portland; investigative and environmental reporter for The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash.; and special projects editor at the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal.

His alma mater, Middle Tennessee State University, inducted Foster into its College of Media and Entertainment Wall of Fame in 2003.

Foster was a judge for the Pulitzer Prizes in 2011 and in 2009, along with Esposito, was a social media fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communications' Knight Digital Media Center.