Davenport-based newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises this week announced that Rob Cravaritis has been named president of the Quad-City Times and Lee’s Iowa business unit, which includes markets in Waterloo, Mason City and Sioux City.
His appointment was reported by the Quad-City Times and Dispatch-Argus.
It’s not clear when Mr. Cravaritis will take over the role of president, which has been vacant since Debbie Anselm resigned in October to become executive director of the Iowa Newspaper Association.
Mr. Cravaritis has more than 20 years of experience in business development, advertising sales, revenue growth, marketing and sales leadership.
In 2022, he joined Hart Energy as its chief revenue officer. Hart, which is based in Houston, Texas, publishes online newspapers and magazines covering the petroleum industry and provides related research and consulting services.
According to information from Hart Energy, Mr. Cravaritis came to Hart from the Houston Business Journal, where he was the head of advertising sales. He revamped their business to grow revenue all four years of his time with the company. This spanned the two years of transition from in-person to virtual and then a return to a hybrid environment due to the pandemic.
Before his time at Hart, Mr. Cravaritis worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper, where he was vice president of advertising and publisher, overseeing multi-media advertising, marketing, events and their digital agency.
Mr. Cravaritis also worked for Hearst-owned Houston Chronicle Media Group, where as executive vice president of sales, he led all local teams which included events, marketing, retail, FuelFix and digital advertising. Also, he held management and business development positions at Hearst, CareerBuilder, Dex Media, Verizon Information Services and AOL.
He is a graduate of Frostburg State University in Maryland with a bachelor’s degree in marketing. He is also Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) certified since 2017.
He and his wife Trish have two children, Nicholas and Alexis.
The Davenport-based Lee Enterprises owns 77 daily newspapers in the U.S., including the Quad-City Times, The Dispatch-Argus and the Muscatine Journal.
