Local photojournalist Chris Pugh joins The Mendocino Voice

Editor’s Note: We’re very happy to be welcoming Chris Pugh, long time Mendo photographer and reporter, to The Mendocino Voice. Many of you know Chris, he’s a life long Mendocino resident, and he’s been reporting on the area for quite some time. Chris like myself, Editor Adrian Fernandez Baumann, and our publisher, Kate Maxwell, used to work at a Digital First Media paper. DFM owns the four legacy print publications in the county and has been on a spree of cutting jobs and reducing resources for over a decade. We started the Mendo Voice after seeing where things were heading with this hedge-fund own company — we wanted to return local control an accountability. So we’re very happy to have Chris on board.

Hello Readers of The Mendocino Voice,

Many of you already know who I am, but for those that don’t, here’s a little introduction.

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I come to Mendo Voice from the Ukiah Daily Journal, where for the past five years, I worked as the chief photographer. During my time at the newspaper I covered stories both large and small — from farmer’s markets to wildfires as I like to say. As the pandemic was starting to reach Mendocino County, the owners of the newspaper, Media News Group, a.k.a. Digital First Media, furloughed a large portion of the staff, including two positions in the editorial department, one of which was me.

I am a Mendocino County local who was born in Ukiah, raised in Redwood Valley, who cares deeply about our community. I’ve had many interesting jobs throughout my life. In the 1990s, I worked as a meat cutter at the Redwood Valley Market before moving to San Jose to work in the tech industry at an internet startup. After moving back to Mendocino County in the 2000s, I worked for Tom Segar doing web development for his online bookselling business, Soda Creek Press. Later I would work with Michael and Justine Toms, helping to produce their ongoing radio series, New Dimensions.

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I never thought I would work in the news industry, but here I am. For now, I will be covering breaking news and picking up stories to write along the way, and I look forward to bringing my history, my skills, and talents to Mendo Voice. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any tips or leads that you would like to send my way. You can email me at [email protected].

Sincereley,

Chris Pugh