PERRY – Robin Luthanen, a contributor to The Tribune for the past nine years, has decided to retire to focus on volunteer work in her community.
Luthanen has contributed regular feature work for the Tribune since coming on board in January 2016, profiling local businesses, faith-based organizations, nonprofits and personalities.
Originally from the Cincinnati area, Luthanen attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where she opted for a bachelor of English with a journalism focus instead of a music degree – though she does sing, play keyboard and piano, as well as a “not-very-good campfire harmonica.”
After graduating in 1978, Luthanen got her start at the Ashland Times Gazette, then moved on to the Middletown Journal for three years.
She and her husband then moved to Elizabethtown Kentucky, where she wrote for a Baptist newspaper.
Luthanen and her husband moved to Connecticut, then to Perry for her husband’s work and to be closer to his family in Painesville. Luthanen took a job in classified sales with the News Herald, working there for 15 years and taking early retirement as classified manager.
She then took over running the household for a while.
“Of course, that got kind of boring, even though I was playing piano for a couple of different nursing homes,” she said. “So, I saw an ad in the Tribune and I thought, ‘Let’s apply for it.’”
Luthanen interviewed with former Tribune editor Marian McMahon and thought it had gone well, then didn’t hear anything back.
“I had not checked my email for spam and sometimes things you want go there because they’re not recognized,” she said. “I found out when Marian called and asked, ‘Do you want this job?’”
So Luthanen covered her first story for The Tribune in January 2016 – a local spelling bee.
She performs at her home church’s praise team – First Baptist Church of Perry – as well as at several churches in the area, a few long-term care facilities and UH TriPoint Medical Center.
Luthanen said it’s hard to pick her favorite story she’s written for The Tribune, but was partial to “Student’s heritage fuels exhibit at museum,” published in April 2024, about Gwen Putz and her art installation at the Finnish Heritage Museum in Fairport Harbor.
As far as why she’s stepping down, Luthanen said she’s gotten very busy and wants to do more in the community.
“I’m really, really tied-up busy – I’m having four or five things on a day, stacked,” she said. I have been doing some writing. I have a couple of kids books that are slightly inappropriate – they’re great if you don’t like vegetables.”
She also said she wants to do some volunteer work in the upcoming midterm elections and doesn’t want to create the appearance of bias as a writer.
“I have always practiced that journalists are supposed to be neutral – you’re not supposed to express a political opinion, and in the upcoming midterm elections it’s going to be very important how those elections turn out,” Luthanen said. “I want to do some work on that, but it’s not fair for The Tribune for me to have an opinion and go to interview somebody who has seen me at an event and say, ‘Oh – you’re one of them.’”
In what Luthanen characterized as a “polarized political environment,” she thought it’d be best to step down until after November 2026 and reevaluate at that time.
“Let’s just say there aren’t a lot of people who think like I think at my church,” she joked. “But you’re supposed to be neutral – you’re supposed to be Switzerland.”
