Dennis is an always hopeful yet frequently dismayed Cleveland Browns fan. 🧡 Because of his home-improvement projects, he maintains an extensive collection of power tools and Band-Aids. He loves dogs — and trusts their good judgment in people. 🐕‍🦺 

Dennis holds Cleveland’s underdog mentality close to his heart. This is one reason why he’s made local news his life’s work, why his newsrooms strive to find and tell the extraordinary stories of ordinary people, and why his watchdog reporters work hard to bite the rear ends of corrupt public figures.

A Cleveland, OH, native, Dennis now resides in the south suburbs of Chicago. 

As a writer and opinion monger, Dennis grinds out fulminations, fictions, rants, and reasonings based on truth, logic, emotion, and humor, not necessarily in that order. As editorial director of WordGrinder Media, he offers editorial strategy, leadership coaching, content, and consultation for news orgs, PR firms, authors, nonprofits, and advocacy groups.

➡️ Read what others say about working with Dennis

Patch

From 2016 through the end of 2021, Dennis was editor-in-chief of Patch Media, the largest local-news network in the United States, leading the news team through exhilarating and tumultuous times as a re-startup. 

The quality of Patch's local news reporting improved dramatically under his guidance, and the journalism produced by local editors in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Illinois, Florida, Ohio, Maryland and California earned professional recognition among various press associations. Email subscribers grew more than 300 percent in that time, too, surpassing 3.5 million nationwide. 

As VP / diversity, talent & engagement at Patch, Dennis poured himself into mentoring initiatives, professional development projects and news experiments. 

In 2010, Dennis was a founding manager of Aol Patch's Illinois region. Two years later, his team ranked No. 1 in the Midwest and No. 2 in the country among more than 30 U.S. teams for revenue sustainability. By 2013, he was leading several Midwest teams. 

Daily Southtown

His news career included a stint at Sun-Times Media, where he led the nationally recognized Daily Southtown on Chicago's South Side as managing editor from 2004 to 2009. 

Known for putting bad guys in jail, changing laws, and helping the disenfranchised, the Southtown was twice named National Newspaper of the Year, won several statewide awards for General Excellence, and was recognized as the Best Sports Section in America by the Associated Press. The Southtown commentary section won Illinois Press Association awards as the best in the state among large-circulation dailies for three consecutive years. The Southtown received the inaugural Headline Club Watchdog Award and a Hechinger Award for investigative and public service reporting that freed a school system from the clutches of a nefarious bully superintendent. The Cook County state’s attorney called the Daily Southtown’s reporting a “blueprint for the prosecution.” The Better Government Association honored the Southtown for exposing incompetence and corruption in the city of Harvey, where the police department hid rape kits in its basement and the mayor used taxpayer dollars to buy jewelry and fur coats.  

Copley Press

He was a metro editor at The Courier-News, a Copley Press publication, which won the Associated Press Sweepstakes Award for best community newspaper. Dennis was fortunate enough to be trained here by two of journalism's greats — Don Fry of the Poynter Institute and Bill Blundell of the Wall Street Journal — thanks to his mentor, Mike Bailey, who taught Dennis the compounding and perpetual value of coaching.