Phelps named publisher, CEO

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Ryan McKibben, CEO of Clarity Media Group, has announced the creation of a new position, chief executive officer of the Baltimore-Washington Examiner Group. McKibben has appointed Michael Phelps, current president and publisher of The Baltimore Examiner, to fill that position. Phelps will also assume the role of president and publisher of The Washington Examiner, occasioned by the resignation of Herb Moloney, who came to The Examiner in 2005, McKibben indicated.

Phelps became president and publisher of The Baltimore Examiner in 2005 and directed its successful launch in April 2006, as the first new, stand-alone metropolitan daily newspaper in the past several decades. Before that he was with Lee Enterprises, first as corporate vice president of sales and marketing at corporate headquarters in Davenport, Iowa. At the time he joined Clarity Media Group, he was vice president of publishing, responsible for newspapers in Iowa, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Kentucky, and simultaneously served as publisher of the Quad-City Times.

Michael Phelps also named Michael Beatty publisher of The Baltimore Examiner. Beatty was most recently the executive director for retail sales at The Baltimore Sun.

McKibben said the new position of CEO for the Baltimore-Washington Examiner Group was being created to develop even stronger synergies between operations in those two markets and to create greater value for advertisers.

According to McKibben, “We are very encouraged with recent, independent audit results which show that The Examiner newspapers are being accurately delivered to our customers in Baltimore and Washington between 96 percent and 98 percent of the time and is being read 4.5 times a week (out of six weekly issues) by nearly 80 percent of the households receiving the daily newspaper.”

“We have had tremendous start-up success in Washington and Baltimore,” said McKibben, “and the new position of group CEO will allow us to build on that success and create even greater value for our readers and advertisers.”

– Staff report

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