ACBJ names editorial director

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

American City Business Journals, the Charlotte-based company that operates 40 weekly business newspapers, has hired a former business journalist to be its editorial director/content development and strategy, a new position.

Mark Pawlosky has been working for more than a decade in online editorial positions, spending nearly 12 years at Microsoft, where he was acting general manager and editor in chief of MSN.com and editor in chief of MSN Money and CNBC.com.

Pawlosky is expected to work with both the company’s traditional print operations and its growing online operations. He has already started and is based at the company’s Seattle paper, the Puget Sound Business Journal. American City’s papers have seen an overall increase in subscriptions in the past year despite the industry downturn.

“Mark gives me someone whose focus is the future — in a more strategic way than operationally,” said Whit Shaw, the CEO of American City, to Talking Biz News in an e-mail. “As we work more on the business journal of the future, for example, Mark will be in the middle of that.”

Shaw added: “So often in an economic environment like today’s, companies tend to withdraw a bit and focus all of their energy inward.  That’s not a bad thing unless you get bogged down in operational ‘weeds’ — minutiae that in the long run doesn’t really make a whole hell of a lot of difference to your business. Hiring Mark helps us make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Pawlosky, a University of Missouri graduate, helped launch MSNBC.com’s news operation in 1996. He was also a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and spent 12 years with American City in news positions in Kansas City, Washington and Charlotte.

“I I liked the fact that Mark has a business journal background but also has more recent experience online,” said Shaw.

For the last few years, Pawlosky has run a digital media consulting business called Launch Media.