Veteran Savannah Morning News executive Michael Traynor leaves amid corporate restructure

Longtime Savannah Morning News Executive Michael Traynor has left the organization as part of a corporate management restructuring, parent company Gannett has announced.

Traynor had led the local publication and the SavannahNow.com website since 2008, first as publisher and most recently as market leader. He had served as the Group Vice President/Sales-Georgia since the merger of Gatehouse Media and Gannett earlier this year. That position and many others in sales leadership were consolidated to create a more centralized organization.

“I’ve been fortunate to be surrounded by exceptional leaders in my career; Mike is one of those exceptional leaders,” said Lucy Talley, a Gannett regional vice president. “His warmth, wisdom and ability to build strong relationships with customers and employees made our company stronger in a permanent way.”

Advertising director Chris Corey has been named the Savannah Morning News market leader. Rana L. Cash joined the news organization as editor last month.

Traynor, an Atlanta-area native, has called Savannah home for much of the last three-plus decades. He joined the Savannah Morning News and Savannah Evening Press in 1988 as an advertising paste-up supervisor. He later led the organization’s production department and became general manager in 1998.

He was promoted to the home office of the newspaper’s then owner, Morris Publishing Group, in 2002. He served as vice president of newspapers for Morris’ western group for the next six years before returning to Savannah in 2008.

Traynor spoke fondly of his tenure at the Savannah Morning News in an interview late Wednesday. He insisted that the news organization be grounded in six core principles — integrity, credibility, trust, accountability, transparency and teamwork — and credits the staff for meeting and exceeding those standards.

The best part of leading the newspaper, Traynor said, was the people.

“Not only the people we worked with but the people in the community -- the readers and all those who make Savannah the community that it is,” he said. “It has been an honor to be the publisher and lead the newspaper through a digital transformation and I’m proud of the progress we made.”

Traynor’s influence in the Savannah community stretches well beyond his professional work. He has long been among the city’s most civic-minded, serving on the boards of multiple non-profit organizations. Among those he chaired are the United Way of the Coastal Empire, Step Up Savannah, Union Mission, Greenbriar Children’s Center, the American Red Cross and the Rotary Club of Savannah.

He currently sits on the boards of Union Mission and the Rotary Club of Savannah as well as the Savannah Community Foundation, the Savannah Technical College Foundation, the Savannah State University Board of Visitors, the YMCA of the Coastal Empire and the 200 Club of the Coastal Empire.

He is also a member of the Savannah Quarterback Club.

“I always believed that it was our social responsibility to be involved in the communities where we served,” Traynor said. “Such involvement was enriching and beneficial to understanding how our community worked while helping others.

“And I took plenty of personal satisfaction knowing I could make a difference.”