Over the weekend, there were a few changes in the front office of Louisville City that have me, and many others, quite excited. Jonathan Lintner, who many fans will know from his coverage of the club with the Louisville Courier-Journal, starts his new position today at the club. He will be the new Director of Media Relationships, replacing Adam Geigerman, who was let go on Friday.

Lintner is someone who has been supporting the club since before the inagural season. He was not a regular beat writer, but he chose to take on the Louisville City beat because he enjoyed soccer and wanted to see the club succeed. His original post at the C-J was actually dealing with web content, which makes him a terrific choice for the position. Not only will he deal with the media, but he will handle the content put out on the LCFC website as well.

For Lintner, it is a continuation of something he has grown very passionate about. I spoke to him over the weekend, and he is reay to hit the ground running, and help get more fans coming out to matches for the first time. “Going back to early 2014, I wrote the first story about a team that would go on to be called Louisville City FC and got to know the dedicated people making it happen in the process. I’m thrilled now to join them and continue chronicling the club’s history. Along the way, I hope the coverage reaches a new group of fans.”

One of the most concerning aspects of this new season has been the lack of media coverage for the team, when compared to last season. Whether it was local radio stations like ESPN 680, news stations like WDRB, or print media like the Voice-Tribune, there has been a noticable silence from voices that were promoting the team from day one last year. There have been multiple reasons for this, but the biggest one was a seeming desire to control what message went out from local media, along with a sense of apathy towards certain entities within the city.

Lintner, himself, was at times shut out and unable to give the club the coverage that the C-J wanted to provide. That will no longer be the case. He has stated that there will be a lot of changes coming, and he plans to accommodate all reasonable requests that he can for anybody who wants to cover and promote the club.

Lintner’s experience in the local media will help rebuild some of the relationships that have suffered this season. More importantly, however, the fact that the person in charge of media relationships is from this area means that he knows what it will take for this club to meet their goals, both in the short term and long term. He, along with Jason Eiche (another individual new to the front office this year who has done a great job), understand what this city is about and what the fans of the club want. They know that there are tons of people who have not been reached yet, and the momentum that was being gained last season with new people coming out every week has a great chance of being reclaimed.

This is a very positive change and I must applaud Wayne Estopinal and the rest of the ownership for making this decision. I can personally attest, along with many others, that there was a concerning lack of coverage in the local media this season, and there were issues with relationships being damaged. Wayne has done a terrific job reaching out to people, the Coopers included, to address those concerns.

The level of excitement stemming from this change is quite high, including with our pals over at Purple Kingdom. “I think Jonathan brings a real understanding of the media in the 21st century,” Dr Bees said on Sunday. “More and more people are getting their news exclusively online, and that includes blogs such as ours. I’m excited to work closely with Jonathan to bring even more content to Purple Kingdom’s readers that might not have been available to us before. This  will help us immensely in our goal of promoting the club to current and potential supporters.”

All in all, this is a positive step forward for Louisville City, and for a man who has worked with us since day one to help spread the word about this wonderful thing we have in our city. I congratulate Jonathan on his new position, and I truly believe we are going to reach the 10,000 mark before the season ends. I am interested to see what changes take place over the next few weeks, but I have a feeling one of the first differences we will see is a lack of emoji tweets. I’m absolutely fine with that!