Familiar face at county

By Sam Harvey
Staff Reporter

	Coastal Point • SAM HARVEY Chip Guy finds himself on the other side of the notebook.

The Guys (Chip and Angela) moved to the Laurel area at that time. Their first daughter, Gabby, arrived on the scene about a year later. This year, with their second daughter, Abigail, preparing to toddle, Guy figured it was time to give up the reporter’s erratic hours and to start chasing children around the house.

Toward that end, he’s taken a position with the county — Guy recently became Sussex County’s chief of public information, lending his pen to County Administrator Bob Stickels. Less than a month in the job, local newspaper readers have likely scanned his work without ever knowing it. Guy is still writing the news — he just doesn’t get the name recognition anymore.

He didn’t seem overly concerned about it. “I’m here for the public, to help people get the information they need, and deserve,” Guy pointed out. “I’ve always taken my work as a reporter very seriously, and I feel the same sense of responsibility here — I’m just in a different office.”

He said he was enjoying the work, and had written more than a dozen press releases since going to work for the county. He noted lower Delaware’s disproportionate number of media outlets, not even counting television and radio stations. He started ticking all the local newspapers off on his fingers — the Seaford and Laurel Star, the Leader & State Register (also Seaford), the Milford Chronicle, the Milford Beacon — speaking just off the top of his head, Guy ran out of fingers before he ran out of newspapers.

That’s a lot of people scrambling to make deadlines.

“I know Bob (Stickels) is very good about getting back to people,” Guy pointed out. “I’m here to accentuate that. He’s a busy man, and sometimes he’s not always available as quickly as some of the guys in the media would like.”

And, he said, he hoped to bring attention to certain topics the local media might lose in the daily shuffle. Guy has released some important information already, including background on emergency services, taxes, grants to local police departments, 911 addressing and county support for housing initiatives.

Guy grew up in the Salisbury area, attending Wicomico County schools and then Salisbury University (then Salisbury State University).

He earned his bachelor’s degree in communications in 1995 — but Guy was first published in the (Salisbury, Md.) Daily Times as a high school senior. He’d entered an essay contest at that time (sponsored by Mothers Against Drunk Driving), and won — the essay ran as a letter to the editor.

So his writing earned a favorable review early on, and he suggested his mother had helped keep the door open. She worked for the Daily Times as a freelance photographer, and did a bit of writing, in the 1980s and early 1990s. Guy joined the paper before graduating from college, in 1994, part-time at first, as a “key-punch,” inputting press releases, eventually graduating to assignments as a “stringer,” and then as a full-time reporter.

He spent four years in Salisbury before going to work for the News Journal in 1998, first in Wilmington and then for the Sussex bureau from 2000 until his recent move to employment with the county.

Stickels recognized Guy’s academic record and credentials, and said he’d been pleased to see his name among the applicants for the newly-created position. “It was nice to see someone come in, who didn’t need much training, who already knew all the players from having covered county council for the News Journal,” Stickels pointed out.

For his part, Guy said he hoped to continue building on his five years in the community, getting to know people and helping county government get information to the public.