Two skilled executives have joined Sample News Group early in 2022 as the company bolsters one recent acquisition in Pennsylvania and launches a newly formed digital sales division to support multi-channel marketing efforts across the group’s five-state publishing platform.
CEO George (“Scoop”) Sample recently announced the appointments of Brian Nalepa as publisher of the Indiana (Pennsylvania) Gazette and Roy Daugherty as the company’s new vice president for digital development.
Nalepa took the helm at the Gazette and its companion publications on Feb. 1. He will also help Sample News Group (SNG) grow and serve regional clients across southwestern Pennsylvania.
Nalepa comes to Indiana from Scranton, where he was general manager of national and regional business development for Times-Shamrock Communications and the Scranton Times for the past 12 years. He held previous management roles with The Raleigh News and Observer, The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, Dow Jones and Investors Business Daily.
Tammy Bish, who had been serving as the Gazette publisher, has been promoted to western Pennsylvania regional accounting director for the company and will continue in a dual role as publisher of the Leader Times in Kittanning.
Daugherty, based out of SNG’s Gettysburg newspaper offices, will help usher the company’s community newspapers into a new era of multi-media publishing. He will travel regularly to SNG’s daily newspaper markets in Pennsylvania, New York and New England, as well as the company’s many weekly newspapers. His primary role will be connecting the local newspapers’ business clients to a wider range of advertising and marketing solutions.
Daugherty was most recently digital sales manager and senior digital strategist for Amplified Digital and Lee Enterprise, working from the company’s Carlisle (Pennsylvania) Sentinel newspaper. He has also held senior sales positions with the PA Media Group, Penn Live and The Patriot News in Harrisburg.
Sample News Group is a privately held publishing company based in Huntingdon, with 17 daily newspapers and more than 35 weeklies and specialty magazines. The company owns and operates 30 local websites and six centralized production facilities, employing more than 700 people in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Vermont and New Hampshire.
