20 Under 40 - 1996 Profile: Mark G. Contreras

PRESSTIME

By Presstime Magazine

First Published: December 1996

As a college student whose father had been born in Mexico, young Mark Contreras involved himself in politics concerning Hispanics. Just out of school, he began driving around a publisher-turned-Democratic senatorial candidate, Paul Simon. Simon won the seat, and Contreras followed him to Washington, D.C., as a legislative assistant.

The experience stirred an interest in journalism, a field that Contreras, a former carrier, calls "the best of both worlds—business and politics."

The two continue to converge in Contreras' first year as publisher of The Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (morning, circulation 48,532). His newspaper recently sent an editor around the country to aging-but-successful small cities in search of ideas for reorienting Wilkes-Barre from defunct coal mining to a new focus, perhaps education.

"We have several colleges within spitting distance of downtown," Contreras notes.

He uses business-school techniques to target excellence within all his departments—and relies on the people-management skills he honed in a four-year circulation career to foster interdepartmental communication. Faced with daily cross-town competition from The Citizens Voice, The Times Leader has also invested in new presses (Presstime, Oct. 1996, p. 40), started a weekly in an outlying area and established an Internet presence. Weekday circulation and advertising climb, Contreras reports, even though his paper doesn't discount rates.

He says providing a good, complete package remains the best way to compete with rival dailies and other media. "We try to provide a newspaper that gives readers all the information they need."