Greg Swanson

Mr. Swanson is the director of interactive media sales at Lee Enterprises, and the CEO of a Lee subsidiary called Wired Partners. He has spent the last six years managing Lee’s 45 online newspapers, and one of his primary tasks has been coaching print sales people how to sell online advertising. Lee’s success in selling non-classified online advertising to local advertisers is among the best in the newspaper industry, which has stirred interest across the newspaper industry. In response to this interest, Lee created Wired Partners, a consulting and training company whose customers include The McClatchy Co., Ottaway Newspapers Inc., The Copley Press Inc., and E.W. Scripps Co. Mr. Swanson worked in the recording and publishing industries after graduating in 1979 from the University of North Carolina. With a business partner, he helped build Moonlight Records into the sixth largest independent record company in the U.S. In 1983, he was one of the founders of the Independent Weekly, an alternative weekly newspaper in Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, N.C. Three years later, he and three partners started The Insiders' Guides, which grew to be, at 56 city guides, one of America's largest guidebook series. From 1991 to 1997, he returned to the Independent Weekly as national and regional sales director. He served as a board member for the Association of Alternative Weeklies, and was one of the founding board members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies’ sales organization, the Association of Weekly Newspapers. From 1997 to 1998 he returned to The Insiders' Guides as Western regional sales manager for Falcon Publishing, a subsidiary of Landmark Communications Inc. and the new owners of the guidebook series. Mr. Swanson is a board member of the NAA’s New Media Federation.