Blake Named vice President/Recruiting and Placement in Newspaper Division
ARLINGTON, Va. — Mary Kay Blake has been named vice president/recruiting and placement in the Gannett Newspaper Division, it was announced today.
Blake has served as director/recruiting and placement since 1989.
“Mary Kay has led the development of a division-wide recruiting and placement program that enables our newspapers to hire the very best people from both within and outside Gannett,” said Gary L. Watson, president of the Newspaper Division. “She and her staff have assembled an impressive talent pool of 15,000 newspaper professionals from which more than 400 placements are made annually.”
Blake, 49, joined Gannett in 1974 as a copy desk chief at the Pacific Daily News on Guam. She moved to the corporate staff part time in 1977 as assistant to the director of personnel, which led to a variety of full-time assignments in recruiting and staff development before her present position. She shared the Corporate Staffer of the Year Award in 1987, and in 1996 received the Diversity Award from the National Association for Minority Media Executives.
An Illinois native, Blake earned a B.A. in English from the College of St. Francis. She began her newspaper career in 1967 at the Joliet (Ill.) Herald-News while still a student at the College of St. Francis.
Gannett is a nationwide news and information company that publishes 89 daily newspapers, including USA TODAY, and USA WEEKEND, a newspaper magazine. Gannett also operates 18 television stations, five radio stations, cable television systems in five states and alarm security services.