20 Under 40 - 1995 Profile: William G. Tompkins Jr.

PRESSTIME

By Presstime Magazine

First Published: December 1995

When Bill Tompkins joined The Washington Post fresh out of grad school in 1981, he knew it as his hometown paper. Now, as the Post Co.'s vice president of marketing and director of advertising administration, he knows it as more of a corporate launching pad for future media and the products and services supporting those media.

Tompkins, 38, is part of the de facto strategic-planning team that has already developed such hot commodities as Fast Forward, the Post's monthly magazine about multimedia and computing; Horizon, its monthly science-and-learning section; and Digital Ink, its on-line newspaper and information service. Also in the works: revamped home, automotive and real-estate sections.

Whatever the project, Tompkins credits the news staff for the high-caliber content that helps attract and hold advertiser interest. "We deal with the traditional challenges one would anticipate" in knocking down the barriers between the advertising and editorial departments, but the two groups agree more often than not, he says.

The Post recently offered buyouts to 150 employees, resulting in a "re-engineering" of the ad staff. The process will free the sales reps to focus on selling, while new "fulfillment teams" will be cross-trained to handle all account servicing. One team's critical mission: national advertising. National advertisers "don't know how good this industry is because we don't show them," Tompkins says. The industry has made progress in "streamlining our antique buying process, but we've still got a long way to go."