Ole Miss alumna and former Daily Mississippian editor Alex McDaniel has been named editor of The Oxford EAGLE.

McDaniel, 29, spent her college years covering Oxford and Ole Miss as editor of both The Daily Mississippian and The Ole Miss yearbook. During that time, she won a national Hearst Award, one of collegiate journalism’s top awards, and became the first-ever Ole Miss student named College Journalist of the Year by the Southeastern Journalism Conference.

“Alex McDaniel is one of the most talented journalists and editors in the country,” said David Magee, Publisher of The EAGLE. “I have known Alex for years and actively recruited her to come home. She understands that we are not out to win awards. We are out to win readers, and to make a great place to live even better with a strong newspaper.”

Love of Oxford

Currently the director of audience development at SEC football website Gridiron Now, McDaniel’s career journey includes years of experience at print and digital publications, all of which will come in handy for her new role in Oxford.

“Oxford has always been my first love, and the place where I spent years learning what I could do as a journalist and storyteller,” McDaniel said. “I had always hoped there would be an opportunity to return one day and pour that energy and passion for good journalism into this community that built me.”

Before joining Gridiron Now, McDaniel worked for Alabama Media Group as an audience strategist for AL.com and managing editor at Birmingham magazine, working under EAGLE publisher David Magee. The two first crossed paths in 2012 when McDaniel was working for Parade magazine in New York City, and Magee was looking for a social media editor.

“He had been trying to get in touch with me for a few weeks, but I just wasn’t that interested in discussing the job,” she said. “One day, he left a voicemail saying he refused to leave his office that day until I called back and heard him out.

“An hour later, I was making plans to move (South). I believed in David’s vision for producing meaningful journalism, and after years of witnessing it firsthand, it’ll be exciting to see his leadership at work at the EAGLE and within the Oxford community.”

McDaniel was born and raised in Texas, and later Memphis, but her love for Mississippi — her late father’s home state — has been an ongoing theme in her life and career.

“My son was born in Jackson, my daddy’s buried in Oxford, and my baby sister is now a freshman at Ole Miss,” she said. “Mississippi is my home. And to have the opportunity to do what you love most in the place you love most is the dream.”