Vindy hires managing editor, adds 2 to classified department

Mark Sweetwood, a 26-year veteran of the newspaper industry, has been named managing editor of The Vindicator. The newspaper’s classified department also has added two staff members.

Sweetwood, an Illinois native, will oversee the news-gathering operations of the newspaper and will report to Todd Franko, who was hired as editor last year.

Sweetwood comes to Youngstown from Florida, where he was a senior editor for Hometown News, a chain of 16 newspapers that covers the central part of the state.

He previously spent 13 years with Shaw Newspapers in Illinois. He was editor of the Northwest Herald in Crystal Lake, Ill., and general manager and publisher of the Kane County Chronicle. He also had been news editor and managing editor of The Leader in Corning, N.Y.

Sweetwood, 48, earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Bradley University in Peoria, Ill.

Dan Messersmith and John Waldorf have been hired as account executives in the classified department.

Messersmith has worked in media for nearly 35 years and most recently was the general sales manager at WYTV. Waldorf has nearly 30 years of newspaper experience, most recently at The Tribune-Chronicle.