User:Jacklail
Jack Lail is News Director of Innovation for the Knoxville News Sentinel.
In that role, he develops and implements digital content strategies and technologies and helps remold the culture of the newsroom for the digital era. His team of energetic online producers and an online editor strive to make a family of Web sites that include knoxnews.com and govolsxtra.com great, innovative places for users to visit.
Until a newsroom reorganization in the summer of 2008, Lail had been Managing Editor for Multimedia and before that was Online Director for the newspaper and led all online publishing for the newspaper.
The News Sentinel had its first Web page in late 1994 and launched knoxnews.com in 1995 and govols.com (now govolsxtra.com) and gosmokies.com in 1996.
Before the Web browser was invented, he was Assistant Managing Editor for Technology. In that role, he assisted and trained reporters to use computer-assisted reporting tools, explored "New Media" opportunities for the newspaper, provided software support to bureau and traveling reporters, and supervised the newspaper's library staff.
Lail is on the board of the Associated Press Managing Editors association and serves on the national technology committee of the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2008, he ended the second of two two-year terms on the board of the New Media Federation of the Newspaper Association of America.
He writes a blog called Random Mumblings at jacklail.com and has written for Nieman Reports, Quill and American Journalism Review, among other publications.
He started in the mid-1990s an electronic mailing list for the Society of Professional Journalists called SPJ-L, which was disbanded in the spring of 2004.
Lail was awarded a President's Award at the 1995 Society of Professional of Journalists national convention for his work on the mailing list, Web site and the Society New Information Technologies Committee. He is a former chair of the Society's New Information Technologies Committee.
Lail is a native of North Carolina and came to The News Sentinel in 1984 after working at small dailies in Asheboro and Thomasville, N.C. He has been its TVA reporter, a business reporter, Business Editor, an Assistant Metro Editor and Metro Editor.
He has a bachelor's degree in English from East Carolina University.
He is married to Amy McRary, a feature writer for the Knoxville News Sentinel and a rabid Tar Heel basketball fan. They have two children, Eric and Mark.
His parents, Jack C. and Betty Edwards Lail, live in New London, N.C. Brothers Brent and Dean, live in the Asheboro, N.C., area and work in the plastics industry.