John L. Pitts

Sports Editor
Mississippi Daily Journal in Tupelo

Education

Currently the Sports Editor for the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal in Tupelo.
Covered five Olympics and a variety of other sports events around the nation and the world.
He led award-winning community weeklies in Warrenton, Virginia (1992-94) and Leesburg, Virginia (1994-95) before joining the staff of a northern Virginia public relations firm, News USA.
In 1996, he was night manager at the Main Press Center at the Atlanta Olympics when the Centennial Park bomb exploded nearby. He helped with the prompt treatment of several people who were injured and in conducting a late-night news conference in which organizers vowed that the Summer Games would continue.
Eager to get closer to home, he joined the Decatur (Alabama) Daily in 1999.
In 2001, he moved to the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal in Tupelo. After marrying fellow MTSU Mass Communications graduate Cathy L. Wood in 2004, he spent a year with her at the TimesDaily in Florence, Alabama, before returning to Tupelo as sports editor in 2006.