A media all-star with journalism roots in Ontario will be the keynote speaker at the 2010 Ink and Beyond conference, to be held May 13-14 in Toronto.
John Paton is the innovative CEO of Impremedia, the number one Hispanic news and information company in the U.S. The company has just announced the launch of Community E-Journalism Media Labs in its newsrooms in New York and Los Angeles to assist local bloggers in covering the community. Using the example of his own experience driving a successful company, he will discuss the use of social media and how to allocate resources in the news ecology to create a truly multiplatform suite of products.
Paton has been honoured often in his career. He was named as a “Media All-Star” for 2005 by AdWeek magazine’s Marketing y Medios and was the first non-broadcast executive to be named the Hispanic Media Executive of the Year by HispanicAd.Com. In May 2008, he was a finalist in New York’s Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year program. In April 2009, Paton was named Publisher of the Year by Editor & Publisher magazine. He was recently a speaker at the World Association of Newspapers conference in India.
A graduate of Ryerson UniversityÔÇÖs journalism program, Paton joined the Toronto Sun in 1977, holding a variety of titles before being appointed publisher and CEO of the Ottawa Sun in 1994. In 1997, he became publisher and CEO of the London Free Press. Paton was later CEO of www.canoe.ca and he played a senior management role in the 1996 management-led leveraged buyout of Sun Media Corp.
Ink and Beyond, the annual conference for the Canadian newspaper industry, is hosted by the Canadian Newspaper Association and the Canadian Community Newspapers Association. In 2010, additional partners will be the Ontario Community Newspapers Association and the Canadian Circulation Managers Association.
The annual conference attracts over 300 senior executives, owners, editors, publishers, advertising and marketing, and circulation personnel from daily and weekly newspapers across Canada. The two-day conference includes a trade show for industry suppliers. The annual Canadian Press Dinner and the prestigious National Newspaper Awards Gala are held in conjunction with the conference on May 14 and 15 respectively. The host hotel for the 2010 conference is the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel in downtown Toronto.
Visit www.inkandbeyond.ca for more on the conference. Or contact Susan Down, Managing Director, Dailies via email at sdown@cna-acj.ca or by phone at 416-923-3567, ext. 231.