Jeff Hartley Honored in E&P's Prestigious 15 Over 50 Class of 2024
Jeff Hartley
Publisher, The Capital Journal and Digital Sales Lead, Wick Communications, Pierre, South Dakota
Jeff Hartley is leading the charge in digital advertising for his paper and his company. Stated his nomination, “Digital advertising at his newspaper has grown 620% since 2020. [Jeff] is currently leading digital training efforts for the company and mentoring many of the sales executives across the company on adapting to a new digital fulfillment platform.” Jeff is pictured here with his wife, Kathy, on one of their South Dakota road trips.
First job in news:
District Manager at the Pensacola News Journal (my hometown newspaper)
What are some of the most important lessons you have learned while working in news?
There have been so many, but the one that stands out is you can’t be afraid of change. I’m sure that’s one shared by many. The pace of change, however, has accelerated tremendously. This rate of acceleration has made many of our newspaper leaders very uncomfortable, and that’s understandable but doesn’t change the fact that it is happening. We must learn to embrace the change and its pace as much as possible. This will require us to let go of some of the legacy ways we look at traditional news and sales and move forward.
When you reflect on your career to date, what brings you the greatest sense of accomplishment?
There are several. I was fortunate enough to be one of the leaders in the paywall/digital subscription initiative for the industry and a newspaper company years ago. The second would be what I’m doing now. I’m working with our sales team to accelerate digital advertising sales across all our markets and seeing progress. I can’t leave this question without noting two other accomplishments. The friends I’ve made in the industry and that my wife has moved many times with me for different career opportunities and is still around. I’m not sure if she’s crazy or if I am.
What are your predictions for where news publishing/news media is heading?
In my opinion, publishing and news media will continue to evolve and eventually transition to a digital-only news and sales operation. It isn’t clear when that will happen, but we need to prepare for it by embracing digital solutions for news and advertising. We’re going to be here; the platforms will just change.
