The Daily Record names editor

Kendyl Kearly has been named the editor of The Daily Record.

Kearly, 32, comes to The Daily Record from The Baltimore Sun, where she spent four years as an editor, covering breaking and education news.

The Daily Record’s leadership believes she is the first woman to serve as the top editor of the nearly 140-year-old media outlet.

“I wanted this job because of the opportunity to show vision for what a whole newsroom could be,” she said. She had “so much respect” for the The Daily Record’s in-depth coverage of issues other news organizations might consider too “nitty-gritty or inside-baseball” for their audiences.

Tom Baden Jr. previously led The Daily Record’s newsroom for more than a decade until his retirement last June.

“I am thrilled to welcome Kendyl Kearly as the editor of The Daily Record,” said Suzanne Fischer-Huettner, managing director of BridgeTower Media, The Daily Record’s parent company. “Kendyl brings an exceptional depth of journalism expertise and newsroom leadership to this pivotal role.”

Having a woman in the editor-in-chief role is a “significant milestone,” Fischer-Huettner continued.

“Her fresh ideas, unwavering news ethics, and desire to deeply engage with Maryland’s business and legal communities will be instrumental in growing our audience and expanding our influence through innovative, essential content and thought leadership,” she said.

She said she wants to grow the multimedia brand’s enterprise and investigative coverage, expand its digital footprint and prioritize stories that other news organizations aren’t covering, while “keeping who our reader is top of mind.”

Kearly is from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 2016. Her journalism journey began at the Robertsville Rambler, her middle school newspaper.

After college, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, and looked for work in the magazine industry.

She eventually landed a seasonal job editing a lifestyle publication about the Hamptons. She rose to be the executive editor of Manhattan magazine and a managing editor for its parent company, Modern Luxury. She then spent a year as the editor of StarChefs, a restaurant trade publisher.

But she was eventually ready to leave New York and transition into more serious journalism work that directly served the public.

She cast a wide net, “prepared to move basically anywhere in the country,” and landed a job at The Sun, where she “fell in love with Baltimore.” She was hired as a breaking news editor, then became education editor, too.

She hopes to enable stories that lawyers, professionals and voters “need to know to go through their lives.”

“As a journalist,” she said, “what I’m always trying to do is serve my community.”

This story has been updated.