Leadership on Main - Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 7:30 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. w/Susan Zake

Susan Kirkman Zake is the founding editor in chief of Signal Akron, a nonprofit, start-up newsroom launched in December 2024. Our mission is to ensure that all residents of Greater Akron have the local (free) news they need.Signal Akron is the second newsroom in the Signal Ohio network of independent, community-led newsrooms. We are one of the largest local nonprofit news startups in the country and are backed by a coalition of Ohio organizations, community leaders and the American Journalism Project.Before her Signal life began, Zake was a professor in the School of Media and Journalism at Kent State and the embedded newsroom adviser to the school’s award-winning student media. She taught reporting classes that included public policy reporting, Solutions Journalism and data skills — she also founded and ran Kent State’s Collaborative NewsLab, which connects student reporters with professional media partners.  Before joining the Kent State faculty in 2007, Zake was the managing editor for multimedia and special projects at the Akron Beacon Journal, where she began work as a staff photographer in 1986. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her photojournalist images; she also shares in three Pulitzer Prize team awards. Zake is the 2020 recipient of the Distinguished Adviser Award for Four-Year Multimedia from the College Media Association (CMA).