The National NewsMedia Council (NNC) is pleased to announce it has confirmed three new directors to its board following its annual general meeting held last week. 

Two of the new directors are professional directors with editorial positions at their respective news organizations, and one director is a public director with expertise in the regulatory field.

Paul Samyn, the editor-in-chief of the Winnipeg Free Press, joins the NNC as an industry director on a one year term. Samyn has been part of the Free Press newsroom for more than a quarter century, working his way up after starting as a rookie reporter in 1988. He began his relationship with the Free Press as a boy delivering the newspaper in St. James, MB. As a reporter, he has written for every section, having covered elections, wars overseas and the funerals of a royal princess and a prime minister. Prior to returning to Manitoba, Samyn helped lead the Free Press’s political coverage for a decade as its Ottawa bureau chief. 

Philip Wolf, the managing editor for Black Press’s Vancouver Island Free Daily/PQB News, also joins the NNC as a professional director on a one year term. Wolf has been a journalist on Vancouver Island for more than 25 years. He began his career at the Cowichan Valley Citizen and was also previously the managing editor at the Nanaimo Daily News. 

Lucy Becker joins the NNC as a public director on a three-year term. Becker has an extensive background in the regulation of the investment, legal, health, and bereavement sectors. She currently serves as an adjudicator with the Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal, amongst a series of other advisory panels. She also volunteers as a Director for the Don Valley Community Legal Services, a legal aid clinic. Becker began her career as a journalist with the Ajax-Pickering News Advertiser and Oshawa-Whitby This Week in Ontario’s Durham Region.

The Council, and its staff, would like to extend its sincere thanks to outgoing directors Bob Cox, publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press, Ken Sims, former executive secretary of the Atlantic Press Council, and Tim Shoults from Kamloops This Week. All three were instrumental in the creation of the NNC as a national organization in 2015.