Salt Lake City, Utah—The Deseret News has appointed Douglas Wilks as managing editor, effective Jan. 9, 2012. Wilks joins the news division following 13 years of reporting and editing positions at the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif., as well as previous management positions with Gannett and Scripps League Newspaper Group publications. In his new capacity, Wilks will oversee an integrated newsroom that feeds the Deseret News, DeseretNews.com, KSL Television, KSL.com and KSL NewsRadio.  

Wilks is a founding editor of Savor Wine Country Magazine (distributed in Western editions of The Sunday New York Times), and continues to be a consulting editor there. From 1996 to 1998, he worked as the city editor for the Marin Independent Journal in Novato, Calif. In that capacity, he oversaw all local news content and competed with the San Francisco Chronicle for readership. During his tenure, the Marin Independent Journal was recognized as a “Top Five” Gannett paper in its then stable of 90-plus local and regional papers. Wilks was one of a dozen editors to develop writing strategies for the Pacific Group of Gannett newspapers, which were then instituted at media properties throughout the country.  

From 1989 to 1996, Wilks was city editor and then managing editor at The Napa Valley Register in Napa, Calif. He began his journalism career in 1983 as a writer and then editor for The Daily Herald in Provo, Utah.