DeAnna Emborski believes that local newspapers are “lifelines” for their communities, and as someone who has already been involved in the local community, she looks forward to supporting it further as the newly hired publisher of The Marysville Globe and The Arlington Times, as well as the Wenatchee and Bellingham business journals.
Emborski is a relative newcomer to the area, but she’s already adopted her new home state, and the local area, in some visible ways. Her husband John is a master chief petty officer and master diver stationed at Naval Station Everett, and Emborski herself was recently named this year’s Mrs. Washington International. The Emborskis have six children, two of whom are enrolled in the Marysville School District. They are also hosting a foreign exchange student. DeAnna is a survivor of domestic violence from her previous marriage, who founded the “Victory Over Violence” campaign, to support Domestic Violence Services of Snohomish County and domestic violence victims everywhere.
Emborski’s resume
Emborski’s ties to the community are accompanied by an extensive background in the media. Even before she began her career as a promotions director at WCXL Radio in Nags Head, N.C., she jokes that she was “practically born at a newspaper,” since her mother worked for the Toledo Blade for 30 years. Emborski’s job as an advertising representative at The Outer Banks Sentinel Newspaper, a community biweekly, saw her win several North Carolina Press Association Awards for her successful print advertising campaigns, and receive a promotion to advertising sales manager within three months, a position she held for the next two years.
Emborski was then recruited by Landmark Papers to work for the Virginian Pilot Newspaper, a 190,000-plus daily in Norfolk, Va. In the next five years, she worked as a sales executive in key, business-to-business and major accounts, and won awards for special sections highest revenue sales, sales consultants international top presentation and the PRISM 2003 Sales Person of the Year. In August of 2004, she became general manager and advertising director for two of Landmark partner Trader Publishing’s entertainment publications, one of which was the NASCAR-based “Racing Milestones.” She connected advertisers to “Racing Milestones,” broadening its avenues and turning its revenues around.
When Emborski’s husband received orders to Panama City, Fla., she sought out Hearst’s White Directory Publishers, the independent yellow page provider in the area, and joined their sales team. She became area manager as the company dealt with the onset of digital media and online advertising over the course of her four-and-a-half-year tenure, and her sales team made four out of five Book Revenue Goals and was named to the President’s Club in 2008. When her husband was transferred to the Pacific Northwest, she became area manager for LocalEdge Media, a search engine marketing company, before meeting Josh O’Connor, vice president of Sound Publications East.
“Our mandate, as community newspapers, is to provide local news and I feel it’s critically important that we have local leadership to help carry out that goal,” O’Connor said. “It shows that we’re connected to the communities that we serve. I’m thrilled that DeAnna has accepted the position of publisher at our papers. With her experience, her knowledge of the industry and her enthusiasm, it will be hugely beneficial.”
Emborski’s vision
“With all the news about what’s happening with the daily newspapers, you don’t hear a lot about all the great things that local newspapers are doing,” Emborski said. “They haven’t been nearly as dramatically affected, and part of that is because of the loyalty of their communities. Papers like ours take the pulse of a community, in a way that larger metropolitan newspapers can’t.”
Emborski expressed her gratitude at being able to work with the teams on The Marysville Globe and The Arlington Times, and was quick to characterize their output as a team effort.
“The community already expects great things from the Globe and the Times,” Emborski said. “They’ve built up a solid reputation, so my job is to maintain that, by upholding the standard that’s already been set, while helping to elevate their name in the public.”
Emborski deemed it to be a local newspaper’s duty, not just to report the news, but also to provide aid to the community, especially in “tough times,” since she sees the best interests of local newspapers and their communities as linked.
“We don’t want to see anyone go out of business,” Emborski said. “We’re not here to rob the piggy bank. We want this community to thrive, because we live here, too. I’ll be visiting with business owners and getting to know them. Whether you’re a civilian or in the military, it’s impossible to be a great leader just by sitting behind a desk. I want to find out what’s going on. If you see me, or any of the staff on our papers, you should feel like you can come up and talk to us.”
Even though she hasn’t lived in the area long, Emborski is invested in improving and ensuring the success of her new hometown in the long term.
