Fairfax Media taps award-winning Herald ed: Jeremy Rees has been appointed to the newly-established national community titles editor role at Fairfax Media NZ. His appointment is the first of several new senior editorial positions aimed at enhancing local and national journalism across Fairfax Media’s newsrooms nationally.
Fairfax executive editor Sinead Boucher says Rees will build and develop the Fairfax communities approach, focusing on local and hyperlocal strategy. “The national community titles position is a key editorial role, focussed on harnessing the power of our national community newspaper network, and developing our strategy around communities – in print as well as in digital,” she said.
“It carries a strong experimental and innovation brief as we seek to grow this very important and strong part of our business.”
Rees has high level experience across digital and print. During his time at the NZ Herald, he held several key roles including editor and then publisher of the nzherald.co.nz, editor of the Weekend Herald and head of news.
He has led his team to several Canon awards, including best website and digital innovation, and under his editorship, the Weekend Herald was awarded best weekly newspaper.
Rees is currently associate editor and head of digital content for the New Zealand Herald.
Last month, Fairfax Media New Zealand announced the introduction of a “world-class approach” to digital storytelling with a renewed focus on local journalism. “Newsrooms will work with new digital-centric editorial and production practices to deliver quality content to audiences, when and how they want it,” Boucher said.
Adshel NZ restructures its sales team: Following the departure of Auckland sales manager Rae Anderson, Adshel has appointed media & digital sales exponent Ben Gibb to a newly created sales & marketing director role. This appointment comes ahead of Adshel’s imminent entry into the digital out-of-home market.
Gibb joins Adshel from NZME where he was group GM digital sales. Before that, he was at Yahoo and Bauer Media. He commences with Adshel on Tuesday 26 May.
“Adshel has grown rapidly in recent years and as we introduce digital OOH, a critical part of our growth strategy is to ensure we have the right commercial leadership in place,” said Adshel NZ general manager Nick Vile. “We are very pleased to be bringing a media executive of Ben’s calibre into our business to help us work with our clients to deliver the increasing opportunities that outdoor offers.”
Gibb said: “Adshel has expansive plans to build on its current position through technology and innovation and I am very excited to be joining the business.”
“In joining from NZME, Ben’s appointment is another important milestone in integration that has been taking place across APN’s businesses in New Zealand, firstly within NZME and more recently between NZME and Adshel, APN’s joint venture with Clear Channel,” Vile said.
NZME group director Digital Laura Maxwell-Hansen said: “We wish Ben well and look forward to working with him in his new role and further developing the Adshel and NZME relationship.”
Gibbs’ role will be supported by the creation of a number of new roles within the Adshel team as they gear up to deliver on growth strategies, the latest being the promotion of Adshel senior account manager Simon Paul to group sales manager.
“Simon has been with Adshel for three years and in that time has proven his value as an astute sales person, contributing to the growth the business has achieved over that time,” Nick Vile said. “His promotion is a reward for his dedication in achieving our growth profile, and is part of our wider digital OOH rollout, where he’ll play a core role in sales planning.”
As group sales manager he will now take on the leadership of the Auckland agency & direct sales team, including Sian Gotts who has been appointed to the newly created sales co-ordinator role.
Also reporting to Benn Gibb will be a marketing executive, yet to be recruited.
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