Megan Hansen
Photo credit: LinkedIn


– Editor’s note:
The Nisqually Valley News (NVN) announced that former Assistant Editor Megan Hansen will return to the newspaper as Editor, replacing Michael Wagar who has accepted a position as President of parent-company Lafromboise Communications, Inc. in Centralia. Wagar will remain as NVN Publisher for the time being.

Hansen has served most all of her journalistic career working for Keven Graves when he was Publisher/Editor of the NVN and again 4 months after she was hired as Editor in Oct. 2012 at Sound Publishing, Inc. leading their three-newspaper Whidbey News Group.

Keven Graves spoke of the time he interviewed Hansen saying, “She was fresh out of college and had a spark in her eye that is thrilling to see in a young journalist, especially in this day and age.” He hired her at the NVN upon graduation from Central Washington University in 2007, and during the five years in Yelm she worked her way from the general assignment reporter to Assistant Editor. On October 19, 2012, Graves reported that Hansen was leaving the NVN to take “the reigns of the newspaper I started my reporting career at in 1987 [Whidbey News-Times], and also the newspaper I co-founded in 1994.” Graves re-joined Hansen 4 months later as Publisher & Executive Editor of the Whidbey News Group in February 2013 where they have been colleagues for the last 5 years.

Since Hansen worked the majority of her career of over 11 years with Keven Graves, first at the NVN and then Sound Publishing, she knows Yelm well and will seamlessly move into the newspaper’s Editor’s chair. However, she will return to a different Yelm than when she left – a different mayor and city administrator, the complicit city councils are a thing of the past, and a city and Police Dept. that has been allowed to have a Facebook page, wow. Yet one thing has remained unchanged since she left – daily reports from the Yelm Community Blog, still free to the public!

One interesting observation I have is that she leaves a rather large parent company in Sound Publishing, Inc., with three newspapers and other publications for which she is Editor, to take a job for a very small newspaper group (Lafromboise) as Editor for one newspaper.
This begs the question, “Why the NVN?”
There must be another reason she would make this move and I suspect she will be offered the job of NVN Publisher in the not too distant future, perhaps even Publisher for the Centralia and Battle Ground newspapers, too, allowing Wagar to pass those titles on to her so he can be devoted full-time as corporate President.

Working for Graves for 11+ years means we probably will see little change for the Yelm newspaper in sticking to a “conservative” slant, however Hansen brings to the paper for the first time in many years an Editor with a woman’s viewpoint, which I find refreshing. I will be interested to watch how Hansen creates her own niche at the NVN.

– Bottom Line:
I have offered several times for this Blog to collaborate with the NVN in the last 12 years. Both Graves and Wagar declined – perhaps Hansen will see the value of such collaboration as a benefit to the community and the NVN, as most newspapers have multiple blog contributors.
Therefore, my offer is officially extended to Hansen for consideration.


Congratulations to Megan Hansen from the Yelm Community Blog.


Blogger Klein was referenced by Hansen in several NVN stories bet. 2009-2012.