Seattle Weekly editor Mike Seely is stepping down at the end of the month to join ReelWorld, a Seattle-area company that creates jingles and other sound elements for radio stations:

To immediately defuse the sort of conspiracy theories which usually arise when a top manager leaves in the immediate wake of a paper’s ownership change: No, I was not forced out, fired or asked to leave by Seattle Weekly‘s new owners, Sound Publishing. This decision is entirely my own, one which I’ve been contemplating for many months as I seek to put my family–which has welcomed two daughters in the past 17 months–on more stable ground.

Seely is a veteran of Voice Media Group (formerly Village Voice Media) who spent four years as a staff writer at Riverfront Times in St. Louis before moving to Seattle in 2006 to take over the managing editor role. He was promoted to editor-in-chief of Seattle Weekly in 2010.