Conservative columnist Drew Johnson has been named as the opinion editor for the Free Press editorial page, according to the Chattanooga Times-Free Press.
He succeeds Lee Anderson, who retired in April as the Free Press editorial page editor after 70 years with the newspaper.
Johnson helped found and direct the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a government watchdog group in Nashville (Note: Since re-named Beacon Center). For the past two and a half years, he has been a senior fellow for the Taxpayer Protection Alliance in Nashville and Washington D.C. and a weekly columnist for Newsmax.
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UPDATE: The Times-Free Press reports that, shortly after his hiring was announced, Johnson was “the victim of a mean-spirited Internet prank.” Someone took over a Twitter account in his name and started tweeting obscene stuff.