Veteran Baptist journalist Jennifer Davis Rash has been named editor-elect of the Alabama Baptist.
Jennifer Davis Rash
Rash, who has worked nearly 21 years at the Alabama Baptist Convention news journal and the last six years as executive editor, was designated to follow current editor Bob Terry in a succession plan presented to the Alabama Baptist board of directors Oct. 7-8 in Birmingham, Ala.
According to the plan — to be activated at retirement, resignation, incapacitation or death — Rash would become the fifth editor since the Alabama Baptist Convention purchased the newspaper from editor and publisher Frank Willis Barnett in 1919 and the first woman to oversee the publication founded in 1843.
Terry, who became editor of the Alabama Baptist in 1995 after 20 years as editor of the Missouri Baptist newspaper Word & Way, has not finalized his retirement plans.
Rash holds a journalism degree from the University of Alabama and master’s in theological studies from Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School. She served two years on the mission field with the International Mission Board after college. She and her husband, Jason, have been married 19 years.
With a reported circulation of 80,000 in 2014, the Alabama Baptist has the largest subscriber base of the 41 denominational publications in the Association of State Baptist Papers.