General manager, interactive media, Scripps newspapers, 500 W. Summit Hill Drive, Fifth Floor, Knoxville, TN 37902 (Phone: 865-971-5920; Fax: 865-546-6490; E-mail: bbenz@scrippsweb.com)
Bob Benz, 43, is general manager/interactive media for the E.W. Scripps Co.'s 21 daily newspapers. He has worked for Scripps since 1986. In 1994, Benz was the copy editor on The Plutonium Experiment, which earned a Pulitzer Prize for reporter Eileen Welsome and The Albuquerque Tribune. He went from Albuquerque to the Denver Rocky Mountain News, where he played a key role in launching the newspaper's Web site.
In his role as general manager/interactive media, Benz is responsible for revenue and content at Scripps newspaper sites. In 2002, those newspapers sites achieved profitability and have seen substantial audience, revenue and cash flow growth in each subsequent year.
The team Benz supervises has played a key role in:
• Creating interactive advertising for Scripps Web sites.
• Rolling out an enterprise content management system.
• Deploying registration and audience management systems.
• Redesigning the Ventura County Star site, which won best regional portal (75,000-250,000 circulation) in the NAA's 2000 Digital Edge competition.
• Designing and helping to launch TCPalm.com, which won the NAA's 1998 Digital Edge award for Best Online Newspaper under 75,000 circulation
Benz ( bbenz@scrippsweb.com ) earned a BA in journalism/English from Edinboro University and holds a master's in English literature from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is on the NAA's New Media Federation board, serves on the advisory board at Ohio University's Scripps School of Journalism and is on PowerOne Media's board of directors. Benz has taught English and/or journalism at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, the University of New Mexico, Metro State College (Denver) and Ohio University's Scripps School of Journalism.
Benz is married to Lara Edge, managing editor of the News Sentinel, a Scripps newspaper in Knoxville, Tenn. They live in Knoxville in a restored 19th century farmhouse with three dogs, a cockatoo and a ghost.