(Readers: This is an announcement I made to the staff Thursday evening./Eric)

Folks: I'm very pleased to tell you we have a new executive sports editor — Scott Martin.

Scott has been a reporter here since 1999. He previously worked as a sports copy editor here, and as a sports clerk at the Portland Press Herald and Bangor Daily News. He is a 1996 graduate of the University of Maine. His knowledge of central Maine sports and sports issues is excellent.

As you know, the position became available a few weeks ago, when current sports editor Ben Sturtevant took a new, crucial position in the company as "Web manager," working with Advertising and News content and reporting to Publisher John Christie.

Scott did not just get handed this job. We did a national search and more than 40 candidates applied. That included current and former sports editors. It also included four "internal candidates."

We narrowed the list to six finalists, two who work for our newspapers and four who do not. They were asked to do in-depth critiques of our sports sections, and write a short mission statement about what great sports journalists are doing, and should be doing, in 2007 and beyond.

Scott emerged from this field as having a clear understanding of our role as urgent, community newspapers. He wants more enterprise reporting, more provocative column writing and more innovation on the Web from the sports staff.

It meant a lot to me that several newsroom employees — in Sports and not in Sports — approached me privately to say Scott would make an excellent choice. They described him as an upbeat leader, a dedicated employee and as that proverbial "team player" you always hear about.

Our goal is for our Sports sections to be ranked among the top 10 in the United States for newspapers our size. But the more important goal is to serve central Maine sports readers even better than we currently are. Scott is the right person for this job, on both counts.

Please join me in congratulating Scott.