Bellaire resident new editor of Bellaire Essentials Magazine and InstantNewsBellaire.com

A familiar figure in local community journalism has been named editor of the West University and Bellaire Essentials magazines and their corresponding InstantNewsWest U.com and InstantNewsBellaire.com websites and social media.
Charlotte Aguilar is the former editor of the Examiner Newspaper Group, with editions in West U, Bellaire, River Oaks/Montrose and Memorial, and has written about southwest Houston communities for more than 25 years. Under her guidance, the West U Examiner was named Best Community Newspaper by the Houston Press.
“I am ecstatic to have Charlotte join our team. She will make our outstanding staff even better,” said publisher George Boehme. “We already cover the communities of West University Place and Bellaire like no other news organization. But Charlotte will raise the bar, she will redesign our websites and create a dynamic social media presence for all of our news products.”
After the Examiners were sold, Aguilar helped revitalize The Leader Newspaper in the Heights/Oak Forest/Garden Oaks communities as editor and general manager. Most recently, she was a manager in the Houston ISD communications department, overseeing the district’s publications, website and social media.
Aguilar has resided in Bellaire for 28 years and has been active in city government and community organizations. She has served multiple terms on the Bellaire Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, which she chaired, and on the Bellaire Recycling Committee. She also served as president of the Friends of Bellaire Library and on the board of the Nature Discovery Center.
“Raising two children – and now raising my granddaughter here – combined with my professional ties here means my roots in both Bellaire and West U are deep,” said Aguilar. “While these are individual cities with strong identities, they share common institutions and values, which is what makes them so compelling to cover. I’m delighted to be doing that again, and to partner with George Boehme, whose commitment to informing West U and Bellaire is unmatched, and with Anne Marie Kilday, one of the Houston area’s most versatile and tenacious reporters.”
Before moving to Bellaire, Aguilar worked in newspapers and for 15 years as a television news producer. She cites as the highlight of her “former life” her six-year stint with ABC News, where she was a producer for Nightline with Ted Koppel, then World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. For a time, she worked in politics, first as press secretary in Jerry Brown’s second presidential campaign, then as campaign press secretary to U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston of California.
She is married to Carlos Aguilar, a former broadcast journalist-turned-schoolteacher, and has two children, Victoria, who resides in Virginia, and Gabriel, an exploration geologist in Denver. Her granddaughter, Maria Suarez, is a student at Post Oak School in Bellaire.