At the October 19, 2016 Ontario Printing & Imaging Association (OPIA) Dinner in Toronto, Phillip Crawley, Publisher and CEO of The Globe and Mail newspaper, was honoured as the OPIA’s Captain of Industry for 2016. Crawley oversees the strategy and operations of The Globe and Mail, its websites including globeandmail.com, reportonbusiness.com and globeinvestor.com, and magazines including its renowned Report on Business. Under his guidance, The Globe and Mail and its staff have won 58 National Newspaper Awards and remained highly competitive and profitable in an industry that has seen numerous print publications fall by the wayside.
Prior to joining The Globe and Mail, Crawley held a variety of senior executive positions with some of the world’s leading media companies in Europe, Asia and New Zealand. He gave attendees a fascinating and introspective speech on the importance of print, and where the print and digital advertising world is headed in the future. A special thank you to corporate sponsors Heidelberg, Flint Group, Domtar and Sun Chemical.
His fascinating talk covered a variety of topics and underscored the importance of forming partnerships with other publishing companies as well as printing partners. Some of Crawley’s most poignant and memorable moments included his emphasis on the leadership required by ownership to navigate the current, precarious publishing landscape, the Globe’s unwavering commitment to print, its partnerships with the Washington Post, Toronto Star and trusted 20-year partnership with Transcontinental Printing, its move into a larger new building soon, its intention to double the number of its digital subscribers by 2018, its use and investments in analytics to deliver highly targeted content, the coming re-organization of its newsroom, and seven-figure ad campaigns where the Globe had to deliver on its promise of generating specific results in order to get paid by advertisers. (How the industry has changed!).
For me personally, as a former employee of the Toronto Star and lifelong writer and journalist since 1967, his most inspiring moment (and there were many) was when he said that for him, and his trusted publishing partners, “a handshake is just as important as a written contract.”
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Bravo, Phillip Crawley! Keep up the great work).
