Three of the upper echelon of the Kitsap Newspaper Group’s (KNG) editorial department are departing the company for greener pastures.

Mike Shepard, who has served as vice president of Bainbridge Island-based Sound Publishing will begin work at the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin on Aug. 14. The paper is owned by the Seattle Times Company and has a Sunday circulation of almost 16,000.

He replaces Deborah D. Frol at the publisher’s desk. Frol was named advertising director after four years as publisher of the Union-Bulletin.

Shepard’s responsibilities at Sound Publishing include management and policy-making for the firm’s 16 weekly newspapers and 300 employees in the Puget Sound area. He was also active in a number of community organizations.

Shepard served as editor of the company’s Central Kitsap Reporter and Port Orchard Independent as well as publisher of the Independent.

Pat Jenkins, who had been editor of the weekly Independent for the past several years, also left the paper to take the same job in Hawaii on the daily Kauai Garden Island — a paper owned by the Pulitzer Community Newspapers chain.

Jenkins then recruited his friend Dennis Wilken, editor of KNG’s Bremerton Patriot, to join him. Wilkin, who worked four years in Sun Valley Idaho, before coming to Kitsap County in 1996, served as a reporter under Jenkins at the Independent and as KNG’s county bureau reporter before being named as editor of the Patriot. He will work as Jenkins’ senior reporter at the approximately 16,000 circulation Island Garden.

The moves come on the heels of the departure in late January of the popular Elio Agostini who had served as president of Sound Publishing since 1989. Agostini left the company under clouded circumstances amid rumors he was forced out by Sound Publishing’s majority stockholder, David Black of Victoria, B.C.

George LeMasurier, former publisher of the company’s Federal Way Mirror, replaced Agostini.