Richard Montenegro Brown

Editor, Calexico Chronicle/Imperial Valley Weekly and Holtville Tribune

County: Imperial

Richard Montenegro Brown is the editor of the Calexico Chronicle/Imperial Valley Weekly and Holtville Tribune, a pair of 110-plus-year-old weekly print publications that were often viewed as being on the periphery of local journalism. Not so today. Brown was hired before the pandemic broke out, and when he took over the papers, they were operating on an antiquated model of print first, which is death for a weekly. In the darkest days of the pandemic, when the public wanted local statistics and news from its authorities and others, Brown overhauled the websites, went digital-first and began to operate like a daily newspaper with a weekly print product. In many people’s estimation, the Chronicle and Tribune ARE the local news sources in the Valley. The ability to do that came from a solid foundation practically growing up in the newsroom of the Imperial Valley Press, where Brown started as a news clerk at age 19 and worked for 24 years before leaving for a short stint at the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, where he quickly ascended to Breaking News Editor. In that role, he was part of the team that responded to the San Bernardino mass shootings/terror attacks, coverage that won the paper a national Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi award, one of the highest honors for excellence in the field. At the Chronicle/Tribune, the publications won 12 California Journalism Awards in 2021. On a personal level, Brown is married to Priscilla, who is an ad sales rep and digital web uploader at the papers. Together they have two children: Tyler, 12, and Riley, 18, a freshman at SDSU.