Digital First Media, which oversees Denver Post owner MediaNews Group, announced several management appointments and strategic initiatives Thursday.
“We have had good success at the Journal Register Co., and I know we are going to be able to extend that success to MediaNews Group,” said John Paton, chief executive of Digital First Media, which manages operations at the two newspaper groups.
The changes are designed to cut costs, speed up the launch of digital products and make the most out of the company’s presence in multiple markets, Paton said.
A team of three regional editors will oversee multiple newspapers and websites and report to Jim Brady, editor in chief of Digital First Media.
• Denver Post editor Greg Moore will serve as the company’s central editor, responsible for newsgathering in Colorado, Texas, New Mexico and Minnesota.
• Dave Butler, previously named executive editor at Digital First Media, will continue to supervise California news operations as the west editor.
• An east editor, responsible for Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and New England newsrooms, will be named.
Editors at individual papers will retain control of their operations and report to their publishers. But regional editors will look for ways to pool resources, promote innovation and develop content.
On the advertising side, Kirk MacDonald, executive vice president of sales for Digital First Media, will oversee sales, both print and digital, in all markets.
He will also directly supervise sales efforts in Colorado, Texas, New Mexico and Minnesota.
Adam Burnham, senior vice president for local digital sales, will supervise local digital ad sales in all markets.
Chris Coda, senior director of national digital sales, will lead all digital national advertising sales, and Mike Petrak will oversee national print advertising as vice president of national print sales.
The company also named a number of regional vice presidents for sales.
Chief digital officer Arturo Duran will lead the company’s digital strategy and all product deployments.
Assisting him will be Alison Kane, senior vice president of digital products and business development; Scott Cunningham, vice president for digital technology and platforms; and Patricia Rodeawald, the new vice president of digital product development.
“What you need to do is centralize all the back-end work,” Paton said of the digital efforts, while at the same time rewarding innovation in the field.
To assist with that, Digital First Media will expand its ideaLab concept to MediaNews. A group of employees will be given state-of-the- art technologies and set free to experiment with them.
In a previous announcement in October, Digital First Media said Denver Post chief executive Jerry Grilly would head operations in Colorado, Texas, New Mexico and Minnesota and that MediaNews executive Steve Rossi would oversee operations in California. Both will hold the title of executive vice president.
Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410, asvaldi@denverpost.com or twitter.com/aldosvaldi
