I see the opening—and build what comes next.

I am a newsroom executive and content and editorial product builder who has developed multiplatform operations in major, mid and small markets across the country, including California. I rose from an internship in Grand Rapids to executive producer and assistant news director roles in top-10 and top-15 markets, and I now lead a Big Ten public media newsroom serving Michigan’s Capital Region and six mid-Michigan counties.

Across those roles I have set editorial direction, developed talent, launched content products and built systems that connect strong work with audiences. I love showcasing my teams, getting content in front of people and creating conversation. I work by the numbers, and use them to improve the work without losing sight of judgment or mission.

Andrew Gillfillan
News Director, WKAR
Michigan State University

Platforms

Television, radio, digital, podcasts, OTT and newsletters, plus the audience strategy that connects them.

Distribution

Seeing the whole product and getting it into the right channels. Knowing how to get eyes on the work.

People

Empowering the people I lead and building around their strengths so their best work is what the audience sees.

Energy

High energy, self-starting, and always carrying a roadmap for what the product should become next.

How I got here

Here’s my story.

A kid obsessed with weather and information

I am a Michigan native. I grew up on a lake in West Michigan, outside Grand Rapids, obsessed with weather. I started a petition to get The Weather Channel added to our cable lineup. We got it. The lake was happy.

I also started a neighborhood newspaper, five dollars a copy, made on my mom’s computer and a Xerox machine. None of this is new. I have been chasing weather, stories and community information most of my life.

Thrown in young, and grateful for it

I was still at Central Michigan University when I started producing weekend newscasts at WLNS in Lansing. A WOOD TV8 internship became a full-time job before graduation: overnights, eighty miles each way, then back to school in the morning.

I moved from producer to assistant news director before joining WISH-TV in Indianapolis. I was young, made mistakes and learned from being trusted with rooms and responsibilities early.

Helen Thomas sometimes visited her niece Suzanne Geha, our main anchor. Hearing her stories about covering the White House made the profession feel bigger and more serious.

What impact really means

For a long time I loved the urgency of news. Breaking news, severe weather, big coverage. I still do.

Helping my mom through liver disease and a transplant taught me that impact is not just a newsroom word. Systems matter. Who helps and who does not matter. The stories that make a difference explain something clearly enough that people can act on it.

A year on the road, listening

After my mom died I spent a year on the road with my elderly golden retriever, Graham. Twenty states, from big cities to farm communities.

I saw how people consume media when they are not in a focus group. Longtime viewers talked about familiar local faces disappearing from their screens. Younger people had almost no connection to traditional news at all.

It made me want to earn that attention back without gimmicks. Around students at Michigan State I see the same challenge up close. They are the future audience and the future of the profession.

Immigration, firsthand

I have been through the U.S. immigration process firsthand: the paperwork, the waiting, the cost, the uncertainty. That experience changed how I understand immigration reporting, and the gap between policy language and what families actually live through.

After more than two decades in newsrooms I am more convinced than ever that storytelling matters most when it helps people understand their world.

What I bring

My gifts.

I am a self-starter. I always have a plan and a roadmap in my head, and I am always looking for how to make the thing we just did better than the last one. I love journalism, but content is the broader obsession: finding the idea people will care about, building the right format, putting it where they will see it and getting them talking. The best version becomes something a team can sustain for years.

Seeing opportunity

I find the content and audience opportunities an organization is walking past: the story sitting unused in another department, the platform nobody thought to move it to.

Building around people’s strengths

I learn what each person is genuinely good at and what makes them tick, then build the work around those strengths instead of forcing everyone through the same slot.

Making the work visible

People work hard and audiences rarely see how hard. I put that labor out front: the reporting, the names, the faces behind it. And I care about the conversation a story starts, not just that it published.

Turning ideas into systems

Brainstorming is my thing, but ideas are cheap. What matters is turning the two worth keeping into a workflow, schedule and standard a team can sustain.

Independent Product Lab

On nights and weekends, entirely outside WKAR, I build source-linked public-record products and test the tools journalists will need next. AI can assist with research, organization and workflow inside those systems; sources, rules and named human judgment remain in charge.