COLIN DALE REPLACES JIM HOY AS CEDAR KEY NEWS MANAGING EDITOR

This past May, Jim Hoy announced in a "Letter FROM the Editor" his intention to step down after some nine years as managing editor of the Cedar Key News. In a Letter FROM the Editor posted this week, new managing editor Colin Dale addresses the readers of the Cedar Key News.

Jim Hoy co-founded the Cedar Key News in early 2002, with fellow Cedar Key residents Rod McGailliard and Robin McClary, and within a few months assumed sole managerial responsibility. Established as an online-only publication, the Cedar Key News soon added an every-other-week print edition.

The not-for-profit, politically-diverse structure that the founders envisioned invites the readership to contribute both editorial content and financial support to this community newspaper. Any editorial position taken by the Cedar Key News is subject to the approval of its board of directors, consisting of seven Cedar Key residents.

Both Jim Hoy and his wife Marjorie hold Ph.D.`s in entomology. In 1992, they moved to Gainesville, where Marjorie continues to teach and conduct research in the University of Florida`s Entomology and Nematology Department. The couple bought their house in Cedar Key in 1998, after Jim retired from a three-year research project with the UF Psychology Department.

Jim Hoy and Colin Dale

In recent years, Jim has become engaged by journals kept in the 1850`s by his great-grandfather James Henry Cooper, then a twenty-something-year-old traveling salesman striking out from Waterville, Ohio, to sell lightning rods throughout the southeastern states. Jim`s research thus far suggests that his great-grandfather was involved in the abolitionist movement of the day, and it`s in order to further research and write his story that Jim will devote his now-free time.

Although Colin and Linda Dale have made Cedar Key their home since 1987, Colin`s career as an economist and transport consultant had him out of the country, for the most part in the third world, for long periods. Linda (herself a former Foreign Service employee, with postings in Geneva, Budapest, and Okinawa) frequently accompanied her husband. During a stay in Bangladesh, Linda produced and edited the U.S. Embassy`s "Jute Bulletin."

In Cedar Key, both Colin and Linda have volunteered as docents for the Historical Society and Linda is a past president of the Society.