Morning Call Editor Mike Miorelli to retire: ‘It’s been a great run’
Miorelli has worn many hats during his 25 years at The Morning Call, including sports editor, metro editor, assistant managing editor and director of content.
Since early 2020 he’s been editor-in-chief of the newspaper and website, guiding it through the challenges of the COVID pandemic and an ever-changing media landscape.
Miorelli, 65, recently announced his retirement, effective Dec. 29, one day after his 25th anniversary at The Morning Call. It brings an end to a 42-year career for the Schuylkill County native, who previously worked in Hazleton and Reading before settling in the Lehigh Valley.
“I think it’s been a great run for me,” Miorelli said. “I look back and it’s been 42 years; I never would have thought I would have lasted this long. I’ve seen so many people come and go and I always felt kind of like the last man standing in some ways.
“But I feel blessed to have been in charge of this newsroom,” he said. “I took over a month before COVID, and it’s been an unprecedented time for us. I took over and I think I did my best to keep us as a top newsgathering organization in our area. We were able to do that so I’m proud of the staff.”
Morning Call Publisher Edward Condra said he admired Miorelli’s commitment to the Lehigh Valley and that he will be missed.
“In the short time that Mike and I have worked together, it’s become obvious that he’s the blueprint for what a community journalist and editor should be,” Condra said.
Terry Rang, who served as The Morning Call’s managing editor and editorin-chief, said Miorelli’s versatility in the newsroom was one of his greatest attributes.
“Mike was a great
colleague and a friend, but he was well respected by everybody in the newsroom,” said Rang, who has known Miorelli since they were both young reporters in the coal region. “Because he was a really good leader, a strong editor, it’ll be tough to fill his shoes.”
Rang said Miorelli had a “really good rapport with the staff.”
“He could be tough, but he did have compassion,” she said. “That was steady throughout the years.”
Miorelli grew up in Tamaqua and attended the University of Delaware, where he played for the football and baseball teams while writing for the college newspaper.
His door into professional journalism was an internship at the Hazleton Standard-Speaker, which is where he began his full-time career as a news reporter.
He then moved to the Reading Eagle, where he moved into the sports department, working as a sportswriter, assistant sports editor and then sports editor before moving to The Morning Call in 1998.
Miorelli said his most memorable day on the job was during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which happened shortly after he moved from sports to news at The Morning Call.
“I remember walking into the building, right before 9, maybe just after the first plane hit the tower,” Miorelli recalled “And Milton, the security guard at his desk, tells me the plane hit the Trade Center.
“That day we wrote 23 local stories,” he said. “We put an extra edition around lunchtime that was hawked on the streets. It was just an incredible undertaking. I left the newsroom at midnight and we were so exhausted but proud of what we had done. We sent reporters to New York. We covered the tragedy here because we had some local victims. That always stood out to me.”
Miorelli said he will miss the different personalities that he worked with over the years. Not being able to personally interact with staff has been the downside of remote work during and after the pandemic.
“There’s all kinds of personalities,” he said. “You are so close to people. That’s one of the things I think that’s unfortunate about not having an office. It was so much fun to come to the office every day.”
Some of those names include Jack Tobias — “he was such a tremendous newsman, but he was so quirky about some things” — and colleagues such as David Erdman, Rang, Ardith Hilliard, Diane Stanczak, David Venditta and Will Scheihing.
“I look back at all the people I’ve worked with and I actually feel pretty blessed,” Miorelli said. “I was lucky, it was a tremendous newsroom.”
As for retirement, Miorelli is still figuring out his options. He’s thought about doing some freelancing work as a journalist “but not at first.” He and his wife, Terri, are thinking about traveling.
“I’m going to take some time, just kind of decompress, and think about what I want to do,” he said. “I could volunteer. I love to play golf and I’ve met a lot of friends within that area.”
Despite the heavy competition among Lehigh Valley media outlets, Miorelli said The Morning Call still holds its own.
“Honestly, I think that The Morning Call still has the best, by far, newsgathering operation in our area,” Miorelli said. “I would stack us up against anybody. We’ve transitioned to more of a digital operation and we have over 25,000 digital subscriptions now, and that’s growing, and people seem to like what we’re providing. So I’m proud of that.
“I think that this news operation is second to none in this area,” he said. “Even with the new people, I still think we’re at the top and I don’t think there’s any question about that.”