Blogger Bios

Chuck Cox| is sports editor of People Newspapers. He has been with the company since June 2007 and was originally a reporter for Oak Cliff People. He grew up all over God’s creation because his dad was in the military and his mom also had a job that required her to move regularly. He attended 12 different schools, including four different high schools before finishing up at Spring Hill in Longview. He attended both Kilgore College and Stephen F. Austin State University, serving on both the yearbook and newspapers staffs all four years. He is a huge fan of The Ticket and spends most of the time he isn’t working at concerts and sporting events. He is married with no kids and one dog.

Scott Farrell | has been with People Newspapers since 2004 covering community and high school sports for eight of our newspapers. Scott has been a part of the local sports scene for 17 years, and came to People Newspapers after a five-year stint with The Dallas Morning News in its sports department. The Park Cities People sports section was voted the Best in Texas by the Texas Press Association in 2005 and Best in Texas in 2007.

Charles N. Geilich | is a community blogger for the paper, a position for which he is eminently qualified as being a blogger who lives in the community. Charles is married with two stepchildren and one child of his DNA. After brief stints in insurance and reporting, Charles became a lawyer, and all that remains to complete his resume of most-hated professions is car salesman (but he did briefly sell storm windows in Austin, not an easy feat). Life’s been good to Charles, for reasons he neither questions nor understands, and when he isn’t mediating family law cases for a living, he mediates family law disputes at home for free. He has written two novels but has kept his day job, and he hates piña coladas and walks in the rain. Charles is funny looking.

Kristiana Heap | real estate editor of People Newspapers, grew up in West Texas and spent two years at Vanderbilt before graduating from TCU in 2005. She survived the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and interned at D Magazine before joining the paper. In college she did public relations for Mensa – The High IQ society – and discovered that it was impossible to pitch super-nerds to the media.

Jason Heid | is editor and publisher of People Newspapers. Originally hails from the Land of Lincoln, though he did most his growing up in Denton. His college years were spent at Trinity University in San Antonio. He’s in his second tour of duty with People, having previously served as managing editor during the company’s expansion from two to eight newspapers. His other work includes time at The Dallas Morning News, and another (far less prestigious) chain of community newspapers in the Dallas area. An old-school newspaperman, he doesn’t care much for joke bios.

Stephanie Hutson | assistant managing editor for People Newspapers, bounced between Texas and Colorado as a child, but her family finally settled in Dobbin, a tiny town north of Houston. She graduated from Baylor University in 2005 with a BBA in finance and business journalism. To the extreme disappointment of her parents, she decided to forgo a lucrative career in finance and took a job at a local group of community papers before People rescued her. When she’s not at the paper or training to become a professional rower, Stephanie spends time with her epileptic Australian shepherd, Bullet. He’s special.

Krista Nightengale | has been associate editor at People Newspapers since June 2007. After surviving an arduous farming childhood of plowing fields, bailing hay, and potbellied pig pets, Krista attended the University of Oklahoma where she dabbled in every form of student media, interned at various media outlets, and discovered the joy that is Halo. She graduated in 2007 with a BA in journalism. Krista then decided to see what was beyond the rolling plains of Native America, and she packed up her two samurai swords and headed to Dallas where she now resides with her cat, Reece, and multiple cockroaches.

Merritt Patterson | is a lifelong Dallas girl. She was ripped from the Plano school system during the “suicide era” by her therapist parents. She wound up in a plaid skirt, sheltered from the world at First Baptist Academy and then learned the whole world isn’t Baptist while at Texas Tech University. She majored in Chi Omega sorority events and by some miracle graduated in 1991. She went from going out at 10:00 p.m. with girlfriends to being married with four kids living in the Park Cities. Merritt is a freelance writer with a weekly column in Park Cities People, Bulletin from the Bubble.