Daily Pilot editor resigns after 7 years with the newspaper

After seven years at the Daily Pilot, including more than a year as editor, S.J. Cahn is stepping down from his post.

“There are some things, professionally and personally, that now seems like the time to get to,” Cahn said. “It also seems like a time for change in Newport-Mesa following the elections, and I figured it would be best for someone else to lead the paper into that new era.”

Cahn started as city editor at the Pilot in March 1999, just weeks before the paper covered a murder on a Costa Mesa playground. That coverage, of a man who drove his Cadillac into students and teachers, won the paper a statewide news award.

The 37-year-old Cahn started his career at a small weekly newspaper in Missouri. He has worked in the Washington bureau of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and as a copy editor at the Kansas City Star. He earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He also has a bachelor’s degree from Notre Dame and a master’s degree in English from the University of Washington.

He became the Pilot’s managing editor in January 2002.

“Steve will be missed by me and all of his co-workers at the Daily Pilot,” Pilot Publisher Tom Johnson said. “He has been instrumental in our success and a strong voice in not only our editorial pages, but throughout the community as well.”

A replacement has not been named, Johnson said.

Though he is leaving the paper, Cahn stressed that he believes firmly in the Pilot’s mission and its future.

“There is a lot of talk these days about the future of journalism and, especially, of newspapers,” he said. “We are sure to see changes. But I think that people will always most want to know about news in their own community. News from city hall or the school district — and youth sports, which I always have said is a core part of our paper — is the most important and most immediate to them. The Internet or anything else that comes along won’t change that.”

Cahn’s last day at the paper will be Friday.