Industry leader Greg Booras named National Sales Director at Creative Circle Media Solutions

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Greg Booras has joined Creative Circle Media Solutions as National Sales Director. He will focus on expanding sales of Creative Circle products in the magazine industry and helping accelerate the growth of the company across all industries and product categories. He’ll play an active role in product development as well as sales.

“I’m just thrilled to have the opportunity to add someone with Greg’s experience, talent and leadership skills to our team,” said Bill Ostendorf, president and founder of Creative Circle. “As we roll out a long list of upgrades and new products in 2023, Greg will help us make the most of what we do.”

“I’m excited to be joining the Creative Circle team and look forward to helping more community newspapers thrive. Like everyone at Creative Circle, I want to see newspapers stay in the hands of local and family publishers,” said Booras. “I’m honored to be joining such a talented team and I look forward to playing an instrumental role in shaping the future of Creative Circle.”

“Greg has an ideal background for software sales, with a long history of success in technology/development and then sales,” said Ostendorf. “Greg and Sean give us a wonderful sales management team. They bring a tremendous history of success, strong customer service and a passion for the newspaper industry to our sales efforts.”

Greg had several roles early in his career that made him a tech expert and innovator. He began as an electronics technician with secret clearance in the U.S. Navy based in Norfolk, Va. He was a computer manager for A.B. Dick Company then co-founder and vice-president of HI-TEK Systems, an authorized Microsoft OEM system builder.

In 1983, Greg joined the Small Newspaper Group in Moline, Ill., where he managed the technology staff, led technology decisions and created Quad Cities Online, an early Internet dial-up service. He managed technology for the Moline Dispatch, overseeing computer hardware and software as well as web site operations.

Greg then switched from technology to sales. He worked for Town News from 2004 until 2016 as vice president of sales. He helped that firm grow its revenues from $5 million to $17 million during his tenure. While there, he served on the R&D advisory committees for both America East the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association.

In 2016, he joined Mirabel Technologies as national sales manager, where he focused on The Newspaper Manager CRM product line, later adding their Magazine Manager products.

Greg’s hiring reunites him with Sean Finch, Creative Circle’s VP/sales. They worked together for more than a decade at TownNews.

“Having worked with Greg for many years at TownNews, I’m really excited about working together again,” said Finch. “He’s well known in the industry for his knowledge and integrity and he’s a perfect fit for Creative Circle.”

“We worked closely with Greg on a number of integrations with Mirabel’s systems so he was already pretty familiar with our products and other members of our team,” said Ostendorf. “He’s ready to hit the ground running and help us market our new, unified print and web subscription and pay wall solutions as well as upgraded classified, ad server, web CMS and print production systems.”

Greg is observing several current print redesigns and consulting projects to learn about some of Creative Circle’s non-software products and areas of expertise.

Ostendorf has dedicated Creative Circle to helping entrepreneurs and family owners of community media outlets. “We’ve got to save, start and grow local, community media outlets,” said Ostendorf. “News deserts can’t be an option. Hollow, investor owned newspapers can’t be an option, either. We need more reporters and photographers and editors out there. We’ve got solutions that can help make that happen.”

Greg joins a growing list of new employees at Creative Circle, which is expanding its staff after several years of record growth. The additions include COO Scott Kingsley and developers Heather Swift and Terese Mihalcin, with more to come.

“We’re adding more developers, webmasters and designers in the months ahead,” said Ostendorf. “It’s an exciting time for Creative Circle and for publishers using or upgrading to Creative Circle’s solutions.”

You can contact Greg at greg@creativecirclemedia.com or 706-600-1776 or Bill at bill@creativecirclemedia.com or 401-316-3333. 

 About Creative Circle

Creative Circle Media Solutions is one of the newspaper industry's leading consulting, training, design and software firms, with a 30-year history of success and happy clients on three continents. Creative Circle has redesigned more than 750 publications and more than 650 media-related web sites. We've led workshops in 23 countries, training thousands of journalists, publishers and ad staffers on a wide range of topics. 

Creative Circle's software division has created a full line of web software solutions for media companies, including a user-oriented CMS, citizen journalism, classified advertising, hyper-local, pay wall, paid content and reverse publishing solutions. newsroomQ, our newest product, helps bring down the cost and hassle of print production software. It works with both Quark and InDesign and is efficient and easy to learn.

A consistent innovator, Creative Circle was the first media CMS vendor to release a wide range functionality. We were the first media CMS vendor to offer an integrated pay wall, user-contributed content, hyper-local sites, reverse publishing capability and flexible page and story templates that better reflect the news. Our sites are the most dynamic in the industry.

We also provide "creative outsourcing" to help companies that don't have easy access to experienced media designers or editors to create high-end content. We can create both high-end advertising designs and produce whole publications.

Our goal is to grow local ownership of community media and make excellence affordable to newspapers of all sizes.