Introduction

The editorial board meets daily to discuss news and editorial topics. Together the editorial board comes up with a consensus opinion on topics that are published as editorials in the South Sound section of The News Tribune.

The News Tribune's editorial board welcomes observers to its daily topics meeting, held at 9 a.m. each weekday. For an appointment, contact editorial writer Cheryl Tucker at 552-7033 or cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com.

Organizations seeking to discuss specific issues with the editorial board should contact editorial page editor Patrick O'Callahan at patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com.

Meet the members

David A. Zeeck is president and publisher of The News Tribune. He joined The News Tribune as executive editor in 1994.

Prior to that, he worked for 20 years at The Kansas City Star as a reporter, city editor, managing editor and executive editor. He was an editor on projects that won Pulitzer prizes for local and national reporting.

Zeeck is active in several national journalism organizations. He is past-president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and has served on the boards of the Associated Press Managing Editors and New Directions for News, an industry research and development organization. He also is active in journalism education.

He received an MBA from Rockhurst College in Kansas City and a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri. He is a Presbyterian and an Eagle Scout. He is married to Valarie S. Zeeck, a lawyer and former judge. They have two sons, Phillip and Michael. He is proud to be a Texan by birth and a Tacoman by choice.

Karen Peterson was named executive editor in August 2008. She served as managing editor of The News Tribune for three years. She joined the paper in 2000 as suburban team leader. She has been a reporter and editor for newspapers in Hawaii and Indiana, and for an Army publication in Germany.

During her husband's first tour at Fort Lewis in the late 1980s, she wrote for The Lakewood Press and started the monthly Pierce County Parent. She is a board member of the Associated Press Managing Editors. She and her husband, a retired Army officer, have two grown sons and live in Gig Harbor.

Managing editor Dale Phelps has been a senior editor at The News Tribune since 1998. He oversees the day-to-day operation of the newsroom.

Before coming to Tacoma, he was a copy editor and assistant sports editor for 19 years at The Kansas City Star.

He's a past chairman of the Northwest Region of the Associated Press Sports Editors. He lives in University Place with his wife and two children.

Editorial page editor Patrick O'Callahan oversees the online and printed opinion sections of The News Tribune.

He has been with The News Tribune since 1987. A "nearly native" Washingtonian, he attended public schools in Marysville and is a graduate of the University of Washington. In 1979, he joined McClatchy Newspapers as a reporter for the Tri-City Herald in Eastern Washington.

After covering the Hanford Nuclear Reservation for several years, he served as the Tri-City Herald's editorial page editor before returning to the Puget Sound region to join The News Tribune's editorial board.

O'Callahan has received McClatchy Newspapers' President's Award and other recognitions for his writing. In addition to his bachelor's degree in journalism, he holds a master of fine arts from the Rainier Writing Workshop (Pacific Lutheran University).

O'Callahan's interests include hiking, literature and history and his three grandchildren. He and his wife, Patricia Lee O'Callahan, live in University Place; they have two adult children, Elizabeth and Patrick.

Editorial writer Cheryl Tucker, in addition to writing commentary, manages the daily production of the editorial and op-ed pages and edits letters to the editor. She has been with The News Tribune since 1978 in various capacities, including reporter, magazine coordinator and features editor.

She has a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Florida and previously worked as a reporter and features editor at the now-defunct Times-Herald in Newport News, Va. Growing up in an Air Force family, she lived all over the United States and in Northern Italy, and now calls Lakewood home.