Experts Guide

Welcome to API's experts guide. Here you can find API spokespeople on a wide range of topics including, business issues, circulation, electronic media, future of news, newsroom issues, readership, newspaper design, and sales and marketing.

If you do not find an expert in your area of interest, please contact API at 703.715.3322 or send an email.

• Elaine R. Clisham, Director of Targeted Solutions, American Press Institute,
• Andrew B. Davis, President and Executive Director, American Press Institute
• Mary Glick, Associate Director, American Press Institute
• Mark F. Mulholland, Associate Director, American Press Institute
• Mary Peskin, Associate Director, American Press Institute
• Carol Ann Riordan Vice President of Programming and Personnel, American Press Institute

Elaine R. Clisham
Director of Targeted Solutions,
American Press Institute

• Customer service
• Community markets
• Marketing and promotion
• Using market intelligence

Elaine Clisham focuses on effective use of market intelligence toidentify and take advantage of growth pportunities, and to make betterbusiness decisions. Her 25 years experience at small and large newspapers enables her to help newspaper executives leverage information both strategically and cost-effectively. Prior to joining API, she sold advertising for community weeklies and a weekly business journal; held classified management positions at a group of suburban weeklies and later at The Village Voice and The New York Post; became advertising director for a group of suburban weeklies in New Jersey; and most recently spent three years as marketing/research manager for the New Jersey Press Association.

Clisham has an undergraduate degree in English from Princeton University and a master's degree in business administration with a marketing specialization from Northeastern UniversitY.

Andrew B. Davis
President and Executive Director
American Press Institute

Areas of expertise:

• Strategy and strategic planning
• Innovation and new-product development
• The future of the media
• Military and the media

Drew Davis is recognized as one of the news industry leaders in innovation strategy and new-product development. His presentations on the changing media landscape and the need for innovation help newspaper executives envision a bold new future for the industry and their companies. He has been API' chief executive since December 2003. Previously Davis was director of innovation and business development for the Media Management Center at Northwestern University. He was president of Chicago SunTimes Features Inc., a division of The Sun-Times Co., and of Performance Media, a custom publishing division he conceived and developed into a multimillion-dollar venture. He also was vice president of the Sun-Times Co., and group publisher and newspaper operations vice president of Pioneer Newspapers in suburban Chicago.

Now a major general in the Marine Corps Reserve, he took leave from the Media Management Center between July 2001 and July 2003 to serve as director of Marine Corps Public Affairs at the Pentagon, where he was instrumental in the development of embedding policies for journalists covering the Iraq war.

Davis holds a bachelor's degree cum laude in English literature from Princeton University and a master's degree with distinction in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School.

Mary Glick
Associate Director
American Press Institute

• Young adult readership
• Women in media leadership
• Community journalism
• Newsroom culture

Mary Glick specializes in helping editors be better coaches, managers and reader-oriented journalists. Her newsroom seminars focus on cultivating a more inclusive management style that plays to employee strengths. Her interest in news coverage of women and the influence of women editors has led to the development of API programs on women' leadership in the newspaper industry.

Prior to joining API, she directed the journalism program at the State University of New York, College at Oswego, and founded the Center for Community Journalism, an institute for improving the quality of journalism in weeklies and small dailies. She began teaching journalism at California State University, Long Beach, and was named Outstanding Journalism Educator by the California Newspaper Publishers Association. For nine years she held editorial positions for daily newspapers in Southern California, including posts at the Star-News in Pasadena and Copley Los Angeles Newspapers. Before launching her newspaper career, she worked in corporate communications and was a private communications consultant.

Glick is a member of the American Society for Training and Development. She holds a bachelor's degree in English from the State University of New York in Oswego and a master's in communications from California State University, Fullerton.

Mark F. >Mulholland
Associate Director
American Press Institute

Areas of Expertise

• Newspaper sales and marketing
• Executive/leadership development

Mark Mulholland brings to API a broad-based background of experience in sales, marketing and management cross a range of markets and circulation sizes, at both corporate and field levels. Prior to joining API, he held advertising sales and management positions at news organizations in Virginia, North Carolina and Mississippi, he served as marketing director of theRoanoke (Va.) Times and then in that same role for the Chicago Sun-Times. He was corporate marketing director for Lee Enterprises in Davenport, Iowa; vice president/marketing director for WFLA-TV, Media General's Tampa, Fla.-based television affiliate; and sales and marketing director for the Victoria (Texas) Advocate. He is a member of the International Newspaper Marketing Association and the NAA Display, Market Development & Promotions and Smaller Market Federations.

Mulholland graduated from Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va., with a bachelor' of arts degree in Journalism/Advertising, and attended graduate school at Virginia Tech.

Mary Peskin
Associate Director
American Press Institute

• Newspaper design
• Designing the digital experience
• Monetizing content

Mary Peskin has been bringing people together around the art and design of newspapers for 25 years. She has worked in newsrooms, advertising and marketing departments of newspapers small and large in the United States, Europe and South America. Before joining API, she was design director of the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group, where she designed and implemented more than 50 redesigns and new products. Two of her designs received ;World' Best Newspapers” honors in the Society for News Design' international competition. Peskin spent five years with advertising agencies before beginning her newspaper career with Star-News Newspapers in Wilmington, N.C., as promotions manager and advertising designer. She has served on the executive committee of the College of Design of North Carolina State University and SND's board of directors.

Peskin is a Phi Kappa Phi graduate from the College of Design of N.C. State University.

Carol Ann Riordan
Vice President of Programming and Personnel
American Press Institute

• Consumer marketing strategies
• Maximizing circulation-editorial relationships
• Newspaper circulationNewspaper marketing
• Newspaper readership

Carol Ann Riordan concentrates on readership, marketing, circulation, management and audience development issues. She has a rich history in newspapers having been born into a newspaper family and worked for both weekly and daily newspapers before joining API 19 years ago as an associate director.  During her tenure at API, she has been involved with virtually every API seminar and has developed many new programs, including the first new-product development seminar and the Institute's target-market programs. Riordan is now the chief architect of all of API' core programming, and works continually to keep seminar content ahead of current issues.

She is a member of the NAA Circulation, Display, Market Development and Promotions, and Smaller Market federations and a member of the American Society of Training and Development. Riordan graduated from St. Mary's College of Notre Dame, Ind., with a bachelor' degree in speech and theater.