by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
When she was 15, Tara Wiese just knew she wanted to work on a newspaper, and 20 years later she’s not only working on a newspaper, but she was recently named operations director for the Newsleaders.
Wiese, a Sauk Rapids resident and mother of two girls, joined the Newsleaders staff as a graphics designer in 2010. Since that time, she has steadily and painstakingly learned all of the operations at the St. Joseph-based Von Meyer Publishing Inc., which was founded in 1989 and publishes the St. Joseph Newsleader, the Sartell-St. Stephen Newsleader and the Sauk Rapids-Rice Newsleader.
In six years, Wiese has designed countless ads, helped do the layout preparation work for printing the newspapers, did some proofreading, some photography, helped with delivery of the papers, and wrote some stories and a few columns, among many other daily tasks.
“I absolutely love my job,” Wiese said. “I’m a behind-the-scenes employee, and it’s been fun learning so many aspects of the newspaper industry.”
Her promotion to operations director puts her in supervision over the Newsleaders’ entire production area as second-in-command to company’s founder/owner/publisher Janelle Von Pinnon.
The daughter of Michael and Jayne Wiese of Sauk Rapids, Wiese attended schools in Sauk Rapids and graduated from its high school in 1999. She credits her father with inspiring and encouraging her lifelong love of art and design. Until his retirement in 2000, Michael Wiese was a long-time teacher at Sauk Rapids-Rice High School, and his daughter, in her independent studies pursuit, took many courses from him: graphics, advanced graphics, architecture, photography and multimedia. Michael has spent the past 16 years working full-time for Ron’s Cabinets.
Wiese is convinced her skills were transferred genetically from her father. Growing up, she was never happier than when she had pencils, crayons or paintbrushes in her hand, and a piece of paper or canvas in front of her.
She was so talented in art, in eighth grade she won a drawing contest sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Space Science Student Involvement Program. Her winning entry was of a view of a space walker and planet as seen through the window of the space station. As a young girl, she also won numerous free meals at Happy Chef restaurants because she excelled at their coloring contests.
For 10 years, off and on, Wiese helped her father with his summer construction job when he wasn’t teaching. She was also an exchange student in Germany for a time where one day, on a sudden whim, she did something that stunned her friends and family. Attached to a giant bungee cord, she leaped off the top of a 432-foot crane next to a medieval church tower in Erfurt, Germany.
After high school, Wiese earned an advertising associate’s degree in 2004 from St. Cloud Technical College. Two years later, she graduated from Rasmussen Business College with an associate’s degree in business management and a minor in office administration.
All of her studies and degrees, including her lifelong love of art and design, were tailor-made for her years of work at the Newsleaders. Other jobs before being hired by the Newsleaders include employment with the Fergus Falls Daily Journal and as communications assistant at Celebration Lutheran Church in Sartell.
Besides her first love, art-and-design, Wiese’s hobbies include turkey hunting, spending time with her daughters, her parents and her two older siblings and enjoying special family get-togethers, often up north.
Wiese’s two daughters are Krystene, 15; and Kayla, 6.
Tara Wiese, recently promoted as operations director of the Newsleader newspapers, holds daughter Kayla. At left is Wiese’s older daughter, Krystene.
