Award-winning journalist Gary Grado has been promoted to the position of managing editor of the Arizona Capitol Times.

He will replace veteran editor Tom Spratt, who is retiring on March 10.

Spratt has been with the Arizona Capitol Times for more than four years, managing a newsroom that has racked up multiple awards and recognitions, including non-daily story of the year and 19 other awards at the Arizona Newspaper Association contest last year.

Grado has been a journalist since 1994 and worked at two other newspapers in the Valley before joining the Arizona Capitol Times in 2010.

A Valley resident since 1988, Grado spent 13 years at the Pulitzer Prize-winning East Valley Tribune, where he covered courts, public safety and municipal government. He has won numerous awards over the years, including third place for Best News Story in the 2008 Arizona Newspapers Association Better Newspapers Contest for a story about a jailhouse interview with a mass murderer.

At the Chandler Independent, he covered municipal government for three years. Gary covers courts and county government for the Capitol Times. He is a graduate of Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Before joining the Arizona Capitol Times in 2012, Spratt was an editor, columnist and reporter for The Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette. He was the Republic’s political editor from 2001-2008 and also worked as civic affairs editor, breaking news editor, community editor and urban affairs writer for the newspaper.

He edited stories that won many state awards and several national awards, including a National Headliners Award for public service for a series on problems facing patients in elder care homes.  In addition, Spratt has written for the newspaper’s Focus section.

He lives in Tempe with his wife, Diana, and has two grown children, Katy, who lives in Phoenix, and Sam, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Tom attended Princeton University, has a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of California-Riverside and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.