Ed Pierce, Managing Editor

ED PIERCE, MANAGING EDITOR: From Rochester, N.Y., Pierce spent two years as an administrative assistant to the general manager of the Albuquerque Dukes baseball team (the top minor league affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers at the time) and then served eight years in the U.S Air Force. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from the University of New Mexico and his career has spanned three decades as a reporter and editor. He won consecutive awards in both 1983 and 1984 as the U.S Air Force Tactical Air Command’s “Journalist of the Year” and “Editorial Writer of the Year” and is a two-time finalist for the Penn State University John Curley School for Sports Journalism’s “National Youth Sportswriter of the Year Award.” His first paid assignment was covering the Ron Lyle vs. Muhammad Ali heavyweight championship fight in Las Vegas in May 1975 for UPI. Early in his career, Pierce was a general assignment reporter and then served as an education reporter. He also was assigned to beats reporting about city council, business, county government and later as a sportswriter assigned to reporting about prep, college and professional sports prior to moving to Florida. He received the T.J. Lang Publishers Journalism Scholarship Award while attending the University of New Mexico and won the E.H. Shaffer Award for photography from the New Mexico Press Association and a Florida Society of Newspaper Editors Award for his coverage of prep football in Brevard County. He lives in West Melbourne with his wife, Nancy, and is the stepfather of three grown sons. The family loves animals and have a 9-year-old Pembroke Welsh Corgi dog named Abby and an 12-year-old tabby cat called Gracie. Pierce is a lifelong fan of the Baltimore Orioles major league baseball team and enjoys reading, watching classic western films, playing backgammon and Scrabble and attending college basketball games.