Excellence – to excel; to do extremely well; possessing
outstanding quality or superior merit – all definitions which describe our 2015
Excellence Award Recipients. They are
committed to their own success and the success of Independent NewsMedia Inc.
USA. They achieve results; work as a
team; explore and use new avenues of media and continue to learn and teach
others.
The recipients of the 2015 Excellence Awards are listed
below in alphabetical order by region.
Arizona
Lucas Bennett
Prepress
Technician
Valley Newspaper
Printing
Teamwork
Lucas recently volunteered to assist the Arizona newspapers
with their weekly pagination of the nine classified sections when the
newspapers lost their primary classified paginator with absolutely no back
up. Lucas jumped in immediately to help
with the pagination. With no prior experience or knowledge of classifieds or
classifieds pagination, Lucas spent long and sometimes frustrating hours to
learn our system and produce pages that would satisfy staffers and customers.
The newspapers never missed a beat – or press deadline
His efforts reflect the strong bond between our newspapers
and the printing plant, and promote our commitment to achieving efficiencies by
sharing resources between divisions and departments.
Most impressive was Lucas’s calm and reassuring demeanor
during his on-the-job training period. He was thrust into service on a Friday
that required him to learn and then paginate nearly 40 pages of classifieds.
But once he got behind “the wheel” so to speak, he remained focused on the road
ahead. He faced each challenge one at a time and kept a cool head – and in the
process, earned the respect and admiration of many of those around him!
Penny Bruns
Advertising Consultant
Sun City
Results
Penny believes in the value of INI’s products and does a
great job portraying that value to potential clients. She is direct and detailed in her
presentations and communications with her clients and this has paid off with
high sales numbers.
Her positive attitude and smile is uplifting to her
co-workers. She is a hard worker, many
times staying late at the office to prepare material for meetings the next day
with clients.
Even more impressive – and important – is her dedication and
commitment to her customers. Penny has
worked in the Sun City market for many years (most of those with a
competitor!), but has a stellar reputation built on honesty and ethics. Her customer-service values perfectly match
our company’s business values and desire to develop long-term partnerships with
those who choose to advertise with us.
Wendy Miller
News Editor
East Valley
Self-Management
Wendy is the news editor for three weekly newspapers; she
assists with posting stories to the website and often goes digital first for
issue-oriented articles.
She attends community events in her coverage areas at night
and on the weekends, and gives talks to local organizations about community
newspapers and Independent Newsmedia Inc. USA.
She builds great team morale by encouraging recycling of
office paper and cans; planning potlucks and decorating the office for major
holidays.
Delmarva
Craig Anderson
Reporter
Delaware State News
Purposeful Newspapers
Craig is always on top of daily breaking news and even
better, he is always looking for enterprise material and features that help the
community with initiatives and a better understanding of issues. He’s a self-manager who truly understands how
community newspapers succeed.
In 2014, Craig tackled numerous stories and issues. Among
those that stand out were: The fallout from the City of Dover’s police chief selection
and resignation of the mayor; The controversies that swirled around maverick
state treasurer Chip Flowers; The
secretive prioritization process of DelDOT highway projects; Violence in Dover
and Sexual abuse cases
involving teachers. His reporting is thorough and accurate, and
the result is a solid connection with readers and respect of sources.
Craig leads by example. We continually benefit from his self-motivated
approach to have great content every day and efficient use of all hours.
Tim Buzzard
Electrical Technician
Delaware Printing
Company
Commitment
The
word “commitment” defines Tim to a “T”! Beyond performing his “regular”
job as DPC Electrical Technician taking care of the KBA press, he volunteers in any
department as needed. He fills in as electrician,
safety manager, machine maintenance, building maintenance, insert feeder,
ink jet mailer, CTP processor guru, etc., etc., The list is almost
endless. He even goes so far as to row out in
the drainage “pond” to rid us of the cattails growing! He is always on patrol for any unwanted insects or
critters that might make their way into the buildings. It doesn’t matter when you call Tim for help.
Be it day, night or even on his vacation, he will try
to assist in any way he can. As mentioned in Presslines a few weeks ago,
Tim is our DPC "Super
Hero" committed to perfection in all areas of our business!.
Anthony Crawford
Night dock/warehouse
Coordinator
Delaware Printing
Company
Self-Management
Anthony’s position is a completely self-managed one and each night
he fulfills his duties and responsibilities, near flawless. The dock coordinator position was created to help facilitate the distribution of our newspapers to
our carriers. This can be a challenging
job with the late hours and variety of personalities to interact with.
Our goal was to “smooth out” the process and give the carriers a “go to” person
in the event of problems on the dock as well as a reliable, solid person to
keep the warehouse in good shape, help the insert team produce good products, and have our delivery trucks loaded and ready to go when
the drivers arrive. Anthony meets and
exceeds these goals every night.
Just being around Anthony can be inspiring. His personal
high standards and great work ethic are admired by all.
Heather Cregar
Advertising &
Promotions Coordinator
Independent of
Delmarva
Self-Management
Heather demonstrates outstanding self-management every day
in her job. Heather is at the nerve center of our advertising team and
takes a very decisive and proactive role in making sure things go well,
frequently taking care of issues and shepherding things through after others
have gone home.
Heather has a high quality standard and self directs her
actions to maximize the quality that we deliver to our clients and readers. In
her daily actions, Heather thinks the way an “owner” of the newspaper would,
and that is the way we’d all like to be!
As promotion manager, Heather negotiates and prepares
promotion proposals for community events and she takes the lead in making
things happen once a sponsorship is in place. When the events
‘go live’, Heather takes ownership for making sure we are well represented and
put our best foot forward. The definition of a self-manager is someone
not waiting to be told and taking proactive steps for success, and Heather
Cregar definitely does this for the Delmarva operation on a daily basis.
Sharon Harvey
Advertising Assistant
Delaware State News
Commitment
Sharon has been with INI for more than 45 years and in that
time she has become the go to person for the advertising team and their
customers. She is always patient and
courteous even with difficult customers.
And if she doesn’t have the answers, she can quickly find the right
person who does.
Sharon consistently handles a large number of clients each
week. She does the order entry, sends ad
copy to Graphics, follows up on payments, proofs ads, forwards proofs to the
customers and follows up with them for approval. She also handles most of the order entry for
the house ads placed for the Delmarva group.
And it is her phone that handles all incoming calls to the advertising
department making sure everyone hears a live voice. When things are “crazy” it is never “take a
number and I’ll get back to you” she calmly makes time to answer your question;
proof an ad or defuse an agitated customer.
Sharon understands that “outstanding customer service” means
different things to different customers and she does a great job of knowing
what each customer’s expectations are.
Angi Hicks
Graphics Designer
Milford/The Journal
Commitment
Angi is a true servant leader, asking little of others but
always making certain she meets the needs and exceeds the expectations of those
who depend upon her organizational skills and talent as a graphic designer. She
is literally a one-person band, handling print ad design for four papers, while
producing a never ending string of special section covers and promotional
flyers, and then on top of that schedules all the digital ads company-wide. In
her spare moments, she serves as the Milford office manager.
“Productivity” is
her middle name.
With hardly a blink, Angi added the Salisbury Independent
to her roster of responsibility, starting in May 2014. She never misses a
deadline and consistently earns the praise of her co-workers. The sales team
for the Delmarva weeklies will tell you Angi is simply the best graphic artist
they have ever worked with. She takes the germ of an idea and quickly develops
it into a dynamic ad. She has received lots of praise from advertisers, and
many clients ask for her by name.
Angi’s work ethic has set the standard for everyone who is
associated with the Delmarva weeklies. Her attitude is beyond can-do; it is
“will-do and done.” She offers everyone a level of confidence that once the
work reaches her it will be done correctly and on-time.
Maryam Noroozipuya
Inserter
Delaware Printing
Company
Learning
Maryam was hired as a temporary insert feeder to help us through
our "busy" season, but it did not take long to realize she had much
more to offer. She is a quick learner and mastered insert feeding within
a few weeks.
She then learned how to set-up feeders on her own. She trained
on the Video Jet mail machine and we were pleasantly surprised as she learned
its operations with just a few jobs under her belt.
Next she tackled the fork truck and obtained her license to
operate it. It seems no matter what we ask her to learn, she is going to be a
quick study, ready for the next thing to do.
When a full time position opened we quickly moved Maryam into it
realizing we needed to keep someone with her abilities, high work ethics and
standards. She is an inspiration to her co-workers. Maryam has an
accounting background thus
a real keen attention to detail required by a person in this field. Her attention to detail is evident in all she does,
as she strives to be “perfect” as possible.
Maryam
is a real pleasure to work with and have on our team!
Dianna Sellers
Classified Operations Manager
Delaware State News
Leadership/Shared
Leadership
Dianna is one of those unique individuals who can transition
from team member to team leader. She takes
her role as Team Leader for the Delmarva Classified Department seriously but
she is also willing to jump in and assist her team when needed doing everything
from taking ads; assisting customers with delivery issues; entering obit
information or answering the phones at the front desk. She has a positive
attitude which is contagious creating a pleasant work environment.
Katrina Sullivan
Delaware State News
Commitment & Team Work
Katrina consistently seeks out opportunities to be engaged
in activities that showcase our company's commitment to support community
events. She is an active member in
multiple business networking organizations and always in attendance at Chamber
of Commerce events.
Katrina has parlayed her professional networking into
converting several local advertisers in a competitive weekly publication into
frequent and dedicated Delaware State News advertisers. More importantly,
she has gained the advertisers confidence to drop the competitive publication.
Katrina continued to call on lapsed advertisers to maintain their trust and
confidence so when they realized their investment in other mediums was
unsuccessful, she quickly recovered their budgets.
Katrina's positive can do attitude is infectious – she is a
consistent cheerleader for our company. She is all about the success of her team
members and is always available to answer questions and share information and
strategies that she has found beneficial.
She believes there is a sales method for everyone and is willing to help
others find theirs.
Victoria Twisselmann
Classified Sales
Consultant
Delaware State News
Teamwork
Victoria has been with INI a
little over one year, however, in that time she has exhibited an extraordinary
level of teamwork. She welcomes all new
challenges and has learned how to perform most of the tasks associated with her
position. While effectively wearing lots
of different hats throughout the day, Victoria is always willing to help and
support the team in anyway necessary. She is open to learn something new and
she brings new ideas to every discussion.
Debbie Devlin and Sheri Sussman
 |
| Debbie Devlin |
Delaware State News
Results
Success in the layout department starts with organization
and communication. Debbie and Sheri’s daily performance exemplify the
importance of both. Methodically, they
pull ad manifests and match the news plans for the Delaware State News and
multiple weekly newspapers on Delmarva.
The layout team is situated as the “hub” of our daily
operation and communication is vital between almost every department. When ads are in task for too long, layout is
there with the reminders. When information
is missing from ad entry, layout questions it.
When space is too tight or too loose, the communication is immediate
with editors. When the classified and
obituaries are released, the two of them have a “puzzle” to complete each day
to fit everything in efficiently. Our
ability to make deadlines and wisely package the news and advertising has to
run through this “hub.”
 |
| Sheri Sussman |
There is daily accountability thanks to Sheri and Debbie. No one likes messages about late ads, missing
ads, ads in tasks, but we can be thankful that they are on top of the problems
early and often so it saves us time and money.
The two of them generate weekly and monthly reports that are useful in
trouble-shooting issues and useful in reviewing how well our news plans
(particularly minimum news holes) are working.
Florida
Melissa Beltz
News Editor
Clewiston News
Commitment
Melissa
organizes her work and sets a pace to reach beyond the daily goals. She attends all important community functions
making sure INI has a presence and does a phenomenal job reporting on each
event.
In less than 2 years Melissa has
gone from reporter to news editor! She demonstrates drive, self-management and
is committed to presenting a positive impression of INI to the community.
Through both newsprint and Facebook, she has made a
prominent appearance throughout the community. Community members and business
owners have taken notice of Melissa's stories and dedication to reporting
accuracy and have noted positive feedback thus making it easier for our sales
representative to connect with business owners for advertising.
Kristina Schwartz
Graphics Designer
Okeechobee News
Teamwork & Results
Kristina
is a team player with all teams at the Okeechobee office. She designs sales fliers and the covers of
special publications are well thought out; she gives all of her designs a lot
of thought and planning. These special
sections become selling tools for the ad managers for the next year. She has the ability to think outside the box
giving our customers a great product.
She is
very knowledgeable about computers and is always willing to assist team members
with problems. She has even jumped in
and helped build editorial pages when needed.
Kay Sheedy
Okeechobee News
Self-Management
Kay epitomizes the
sales executive who takes ownership of her work. Kay believes in herself
and especially the benefits of advertising in our products (especially the
Okeechobee News). However, like the best sales people, Kay above all
believes in the importance of serving her clients to get the best results for
them.
Kay is a great self-starter and generates many positive ideas
and plans to help both the company and her customers. She takes the lead
in looking downstream at opportunities, and can always be counted on to seek
improved results and more effective ROI for advertisers and increased sales for
us.
During this last year, Kay has really had a chance to show
what an excellent self-manager she can be with the departure of Florida group
leader Tom Byrd to the Delaware State News. Kay worked to fill the void
in advertising leadership and helped new publisher Katrina Elsken Muros take the
lead in seizing opportunities in the highly competitive Okeechobee market.
