Rusty Coats

Has worked in interactive media for 15 years, driving audience and revenue for such news companies as McClatchy, Media General and E.W. Scripps. He is an architect of the multi-faceted Newspaper Consortium/Yahoo! Partnership, which now includes more than 800 newspapers and drives tens of millions of dollars in digital revenues.

As VP of Interactive at E.W. Scripps, Rusty aligned the company under the vision of “56.2012,” a numerical rally cry meaning that by 2012, the company would drive $56 million in pure interactive revenue – a dollar amount that would fully pay for the newsroom budgets across the company. In his first year at Scripps, Rusty moved Scripps from being a poor performer in Yahoo!/interactive sales to being the Consortium’s top performer, and led the company toward the goal of 56.2012.

Rusty has worked in interactive media since 1993, first as a technology reporter covering Silicon Valley for McClatchy News Service. In 1996, he built The Modesto Bee’s – and McClatchy’s – first website in a six-week blitz so his publisher could have bragging rights over other McClatchy publishers. He then went on to run websites for The Sacramento Bee, The Star Tribune in Minneapolis and TBO.com, the website for the Tampa Tribune and Tampa’s Channel 8 television. He also served as Director of New Media for Frank N. Magid Associates, consulting with a wide range of media companies in North America and Europe to develop interactive strategies.

Rusty holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and English from Indiana University.
In 2005, he was named Online Innovator of the Year by his peers in the Newspaper Association of America, and from 2008-2009, he served as co-chair of the Newspaper Consortium.