L.A. Times hires veteran advertising executive as chief revenue officer
Don Reis, a former top sales executive at USA Today, has been named senior vice president and chief revenue officer of the Los Angeles Times.
Reis, who has also held senior advertising positions at the Wall Street Journal and ESPN, will oversee sales and sponsorship efforts across the Los Angeles Times, latimes.com, the Spanish-language publication Hoy and other Times publications.
He replaces Mike Tannourji, who had been executive vice president of advertising since August 2012.
Publisher and Chief Executive Austin Beutner said Reis would help boost the Times’ visibility and reach.
“We’ve got the most engaged audience in Los Angeles, and it’s about doing a better job of presenting that story to advertisers and sponsors,” Beutner said.
Reis, 59, will work closely with advertisers to help them better engage with Times audiences across multiple platforms: digital, print, mobile and video among them, Beutner said.
“My first order of business is just to dive in deep and meet with all of the department heads and get my arms around what the situation is currently,” Reis said.
A UC Irvine liberal arts graduate, Reis joins the company from USA Today, where he was vice president of ad sales for the western region and oversaw offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Before, he worked at the Wall Street Journal for seven years as vice president of multimedia sales in charge of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Asia. He held the same role at ESPN, where he oversaw its print, digital, television and X Games advertising sales teams in the West.
ESPN President John Skipper worked with Reis at the company for a decade, including during the launch of ESPN The Magazine in 1998, and called him a “consummate sales pro.”
“Don ran the West Coast office for us and it was a smash hit of a magazine,” Skipper said. “We had lots and lots of important clients on the West Coast, including Nike and Adidas up in the northwest and the car companies in Southern California and some of the technology companies in Northern California. It was very entrepreneurial within a larger company, and Don understands how to work in both.”
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