Roger Gitlin during his Del Norte County supervisor days. | File photo: Andrew Goff

The Del Norte Triplicate has experienced a change in leadership, though it’s someone the community has had a long history with.

Roger Gitlin confirmed that he has taken on the role of editor effective Monday. A former two-term county supervisor, Gitlin had contributed a weekly column, “Eye on Del Norte” and provided news coverage starting with the November 2022 election.

On Tuesday, Gitlin said he’s replacing Dan Schmidt as the Triplicate’s editor, though that position had been handled by David Rupkalvis from The World in Coos Bay for the past several months.

“He was handling three papers including The World, The Pilot and The Triplicate,” Gitlin told the Outpost. “It’s a lot to do. It’s impossible to do especially from 130 miles away, and so the folks at (Country Media) asked me if I would be available to help fill in stories.”

Based in Salem, Country Media bought the Triplicate and the Pilot from Western Communications in 2019. The other Southern Oregon newspaper it owns includes the Bandon Western World in addition to the World in Coos Bay.

When it bought the newspaper, the Triplicate had published twice a week. It now comes out on Fridays.

It was the Triplicate’s former editor, Dan Schmidt, who announced to Del Norte County supervisors that the newspaper was under new management.

“Roger and I are going to work very closely together and, we hope, with some of you,” Schmidt told supervisors. “I think this is a great opportunity to establish some initiatives that would be beneficial to the entire community — to the business community and to the public.”

Gitlin moved to Del Norte County in 2010 and was elected to represent District 1 on the Board of Supervisors in 2012. He studied electronic media and broadcast journalism from California State University Northridge, according to his Facebook page.

On Tuesday, Gitlin responded to Schmidt’s statement about working with him, adding that there are some issues he differs with his predecessor on. One of those is the county’s efforts to obtain a grant to establish multi-faceted homelessness program incorporating pallet homes, an emergency shelter and wraparound services.

“I know how money and emotion sometimes doesn’t mix,” Gitlin told the Outpost. “We have a problem and we need to address it (starting) small with some successes to see if it works and put the foot on the accelerator, so to speak, if something is working.”

Gitlin said the Triplicate could also use some improvement.

“There’s plenty of news that comes out of Del Norte County that doesn’t get reported on,” he said. “That’s problematic when we’re supposed to be the Fourth Estate. You have diversions and detours. People don’t know what’s going on. One of the things I intend to do is cover as much as I possibly can as accurately as I can do it.”

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