Sacramento News & Review has tapped arts & culture editor Rachel Leibrock and managing editor Nick Miller as its new co-editors. They will replace founding editor Melinda Welsh, who announced earlier this year that she is stepping down.

“Melinda [has done] an amazing job of steering our paper through all kinds of challenges to build the paper it is today, eagerly anticipated each week by more than 300,000 readers,” said COO Deborah Redmond.

Redmond says that Welsh will remain on staff as editor at large. Here’s the full release:

SACRAMENTO (June 13, 2012) — After a five-month national search for a new editor, SN&R found its next editors hiding in plain sight. On July 1, long-time SN&R employees, Arts & Culture Editor Rachel Leibrock and Managing Editor Nick Miller, will become Co-Editors of the award-winning weekly. Melinda Welsh, who was founding editor of SN&R when it launched in 1989 and has served at the helm for the better part of two decades, will step down at the end of this month.

Leibrock and Miller bring a track record of accomplishment and energy to the SN&R Co-Editor position.

Leibrock began her writing career at SN&R in April 1995, penning covers such as “Cool grrrl” and “I was a teenage spy.” She went on to a considerable career as an arts and pop-culture writer at The Sacramento Bee. SN&R was delighted in June 2009 when Leibrock returned home to continue her calling with SN&R. Since her return, she has won multiple awards for writing and editing.

Miller grew up reading SN&R and is now an award-winning editor and writer. A long-time denizen of the Sacramento music scene, his more recent stories have focused on local news, including homelessness, Midtown-Downtown issues, the Sacramento Kings arena proposal and the Occupy movement.

“Rachel and Nick bring a lot of new ideas and young energy to our pages; I can’t wait to see what they’ll
do,” said Jeff vonKaenel, president of the News & Review newspapers.