New editor ‘comes home’ to the Herald

By Lethbridge Herald on January 4, 2025.

The newest face in the Lethbridge Herald newsroom might be familiar to longtime readers of the paper.
Scott Sakatch recently took over the editing reins from Al Beeber, who chose to scale back his working hours to part-time for the new year. Sakatch and Beeber worked together in the newsroom from 1997 until 2006, when Sakatch left to start his own business.
“It felt a lot like coming home again,” Sakatch says of returning to the Herald. “In the nine years that I worked here (previously), there was never a single day when I thought, ‘ugh, I have to go to work today.’ I’ve had more than a few jobs in my career where I couldn’t say that without my pants starting on fire.”
After leaving the Herald, Sakatch did consulting work for a number of southern Alberta businesses and organizations. He also worked closely with Greg Weadick, former Lethbridge West MLA and cabinet minister, for a number of years and spent four years teaching various journalism courses at Lethbridge College (now Polytechnic). That gave him the opportunity to teach alongside D’Arcy Kavanagh, who’d been his instructor years earlier.
“That was a real thrill for me,” says Sakatch. “It just went to show that you never know life is going to lead you.”
That philosophy also applies to the past ten years. Beginning in 2014, Sakatch and his wife Janine, also a former Herald journalist, followed their careers to Regina, where they spent two years, then nine months in Red Deer and finally six years in Calgary before deciding to move back home to Lethbridge last year.
“We just kind of realized one day that Lethbridge was the place we wanted to be,” he says. “It’s where we grew up, where most of our family still lives and it’s just a great place to be.”
During his time in Regina, Sakatch worked for the Saskatchewan Cattleman’s Association (now Saskatchewan Beef Producers) which took him all around the province. He followed that with a stint at the Calgary-based Ag For Life organization, which focuses farm safety and ag awareness initiatives.
“I’ll never be another Ric Swihart,” says Sakatch, “but I feel like I have a new appreciation for the ag sector now.”
Going forward, Sakatch says he hopes to establish connections with “movers and shakers” in southern Alberta to make sure the Herald continues to be plugged in to the community it covers.
“I think the Herald’s strength has always been the ability to tell a story with a strong focus on the people involved. I always say that the best stories aren’t about things that happen, but the people that things happen to (if you’ll pardon my atrocious grammar).”
Sakatch says he and his wife are both amazed by the changes Lethbridge has seen in the last decade.
“It gives us a unique perspective, having grown up here and then moving away. I think we see a lot of good things that people who have lived here all along might take for granted, like the amazing diversity, the changes downtown, and the incredible growth all around the city. My jaw always drops whenever I see entire city blocks filling the places that were just empty fields when we left.”
That said, not everything has changed.
“I can still hit nine red lights between 5 Avenue South and 5 Avenue North,” Sakatch says with a grin. “And I still see 30 cars in the right lane and three in the left lane all the time. You just have to laugh and shake your head. That’s Lethbridge.”

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