Review-Journal names new VP of advertising, sales
The Las Vegas Review-Journal has named Mike LaBonia as senior vice president of sales.
LaBonia has more than two decades of newspaper and media experience, including serving as the chief revenue officer at the Houston Chronicle for seven years, the vice president of advertising at the San Francisco Chronicle, and as Senior Vice President of Sales and Strategic Development at the Star Tribune. Most recently, he served as president of Conquest Media Sales Consulting.
“You look at the market here, it’s just so dynamic,” said the Des Moines, Iowa, native. “You’ve got Formula 1 coming up, the Raiders, the Golden Knights, the Aces, the Super Bowl, it’s just so vibrant right now in terms of this city, and this is going to give us a lot of opportunity on the advertising and sales side, and bring in more marketing dollars.”
LaBonia is replacing Chase Rankin, who is departing the Review-Journal after five years to become president of Lee Enterprises’ Western Division, where he will oversee 11 states and 30 newspaper properties.
Keith Moyer, publisher and editor of the Review-Journal, said he is ecstatic to have a star like LaBonia join the team. “Mike is one of the top news media ad execs in the country,” he said. “We are thrilled to have him join the Review-Journal team, where he’ll pick up and move forward the great work of Chase Rankin.”
When it comes to expansion plans, LaBonia said the paper’s prestige within the city is a definite key component, but there is always room for improvement and growth in today’s ever-expanding media landscape.
“I’m looking forward to developing some really meaningful partnerships on the advertising side,” he said. “The amount of daily stories (that the Review-Journal) is delivering on a daily basis here is just second to none, we dominate the local media content arena, nobody is doing it better than us. And I have a passion for journalism, I can’t imagine a community, our country, the world, without journalism.”
LaBonia said he’s also incredibly excited to explore some of the opportunities that artificial intelligence is presenting for the media landscape, and how it will shape the future of how people work, and consume their news in the first place.
“AI is not going to be replacing us right now, right now it’s going to help us be better at our jobs, people are still our greatest asset and we’re going to use AI as a support mechanism to make us all better.”
When he’s not working, you’ll find LaBonia spending time with his family, diving into the latest Jack Reacher book by Lee Child, or working on his tennis swing. He said he’s excited to dive into Las Vegas as it hits an exponential growth trajectory and be a part of a city on the rise and working for the top paper to boot.
“For us, it’s about telling the stories of the community based on our audiences, and I want to do more of that, and when compared to other outlets here, we already dominate in that regard, but there’s always room for more.”
Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pblennerhassett@reviewjournal.com.
