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The Winchester Sun welcomed a new publisher, Kevin Smith, this week.

Smith is a veteran newspaperman with 25 years of experience in several different media segments.

He started selling billboards for Adams Outdoor, and has been in the newspaper industry for the last 13 years.

His newspaper career began in his native Michigan, where he started as a retail zone manager for the Lansing State Journal in Lansing, Michigan. He worked his way up to ad director, overseeing two daily newspapers (The Niles Daily Star and Dowagiac Daily News) as well as three weekly papers (The Cassopolis Vigilant, Edwardsburg Argus and Off the Water). His work for these newspapers was for Boone Newspapers, the same group that owns The Winchester Sun.

From there, Smith worked his way up to the West Central Tribune in Willmar, Minnesota, where he oversaw advertising operations for a daily newspaper and two weekly papers. He also worked on the corporate side, building up the digital portfolio of marketing products for those newspapers.

In 2017, Smith moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he oversaw three daily newspapers (The News & Advance, The Danville Register & Bee and The Martinsville Bulletin).

Smith has plans for The Sun, and said he looks forward to helping the newspaper serve Jessamine County.

“I see four goals for The Sun,” Smith said. “First, community involvement. I want us to be visibly in the community, to be a champion for the community and a watchdog giving people the news and letting them know how it affects them.”

His other goals include having the newspaper serve as a multimedia news source, using its digital presence to deliver news in print, video and whatever the community needs to be informed about the happenings in the community.

“I also want to provide our business owners with marketing solutions that will help them make their cash registers ring,” Smith said, adding that he wants to provide the community with a news company that is here to serve the community for years to come.

Smith and his family will live in Danville, where he will also be publisher of The Advocate-Messenger. He also will manage several other sister papers in the state, including The Interior Journal in Stanford, The Jessamine Journal, The Harlan Enterprise and The Middlesboro News, along with the The Claiborne County Progress in Tazewell, Tennessee.

Smith and his wife Sandra have four children and one grandchild. His children are Abby, who is mom to his granddaughter, Lauren; Easten, who is a sophomore at Texas Tech; Peyton, who just graduated from New London-Spicer High School in Minnesota, and Avery, who is a seventh-grader at Linkhorne Middle School.