Management Team

Senior Management

Steve Stewart

President and Chief Executive Officer

Stewart has been part of BNI's senior management team since 2010 and was promoted to president and CEO in 2023. He lives and works from Smithfield, Va., and Nashville, Tenn. Stewart is majority owner of The Smithfield (Va.) Times and The Coastland Times, serving the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Before joining BNI in 2006, Stewart was publisher of The Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register and The Yazoo (Miss.) Herald and editor of The Meridian (Miss.) Star. Stewart, a graduate of the University of Mississippi, is a two-time finalist for the Carmage Walls Commentary Prize for excellence in editorial and column writing. In 2005, he was the inaugural John Emmerich Fellow at the University of Oxford in England.

Joseph C. [Jay] Davis, Jr.

Chief Financial Officer

Davis, business manager of The Selma (Ala.) Times-Journal since 1979, currently manages the BNI group's Accounting, accounts payable center and employee retirement plan. He lives and works from Selma, Ala. Davis has a varied experience in the newspaper industry, with emphasis in the area of accounting. During the years of his association with the BNI group, Davis has directed the group's accounting work, overseen accounting software development and implementation, administered employee benefits, and handled corporate insurance. He began his career as a newspaper carrier in Selma.

Catherine Boone Hadaway

Senior Vice President

Alec Etheredge

Vice President

Etheredge has been with Boone Newsmedia, Inc. since 2016, starting with Shelby County Newsmedia, Inc. in metro-Birmingham, Alabama as a staff writer for the Shelby County Reporter. He eventually became the sports editor a year later and the managing editor two years after that. Etheredge took over as SCNI's General Manager in 2023 before being promoted to publisher and president at Shelby County as well as The Clanton Advertiser. He was then named vice president at Boone Newsmedia in August 2024. Etheredge lives in Chelsea, Alabama with his wife, daughter and two dogs. He is a 2016 graduate of the University of Alabama.

Jeremy Atchison

Director of IT

Atchison joined BNI's IT department in 2018 and was promoted to Director of IT in 2024. He is based out of Selma, Ala. Atchison is a graduate of the University of Montevallo and previously served in IT roles in other industries, such as healthcare and manufacturing. Atchison values community journalism and enjoys contributing indirectly to its success through the wide range of IT services provided across the group.

James B. Boone, Jr.

Founder 1935-2023

Boone was the founder of Boone Newsmedia Inc. (originally Boone Newspapers Inc.) and helped lead the company until his death in 2023. BNI's first newspaper acquisition was made in 1970 while Boone was publisher of The Tuscaloosa News. The News was published by Boone's father, Buford Boone, a Pulitzer Prize winning editor, from 1947 until 1968 when he was succeeded by his son. The Boones operated The News through a family-owned company that leased the newspaper's franchise and certain assets from Public Welfare Foundation until 1981. Prior to becoming publisher of The News, Boone was publisher of The Suffolk (Va.) News-Herald, then owned by the Carmage Walls and Gene Worrell organizations and prior to then did newspaper management work for Walls in Georgia and Texas. Boone's newspaper background was news, advertising, circulation and production. He was a graduate of the University of Alabama.