Greg Booras named national sales director at Creative Circle Media Solutions

Dec 14, 2022

Greg Booras has joined Creative Circle Media Solutions as national sales director. He will focus on expanding sales of Creative Circle products in the magazine industry and helping accelerate the growth of the company across all industries and product categories. He’ll play an active role in product development as well as sales.

“I’m just thrilled to have the opportunity to add someone with Greg’s experience, talent and leadership skills to our team,” Bill Ostendorf, president and founder of Creative Circle, said . “As we roll out a long list of upgrades and new products in 2023, Greg will help us make the most of what we do.”

“I’m excited to be joining the Creative Circle team and look forward to helping more community newspapers thrive,” Booras said. “Like everyone at Creative Circle, I want to see newspapers stay in the hands of local and family publishers. I’m honored to be joining such a talented team, and I look forward to playing an instrumental role in shaping the future of Creative Circle.”

“Greg has an ideal background for software sales, with a long history of success in technology/development and then sales,” Ostendorf said .

Booras had several roles early in his career that made him a tech expert and innovator. He began as an electronics technician with secret clearance in the U.S. Navy based in Norfolk, Virginia. He was a computer manager for A.B. Dick Company then co-founder and vice-president of HI-TEK Systems, an authorized Microsoft OEM system builder.

In 1983, Booras joined the Small Newspaper Group in Moline, Illinois, where he managed the technology staff, led technology decisions and created Quad Cities Online, an early Internet dial-up service. He managed technology for the Moline Dispatch, overseeing computer hardware and software as well as website operations.

He then switched from technology to sales. Booras worked for TownNews from 2004 until 2016 as vice president of sales and he helped that firm grow its revenues from $5 million to $17 million. While there, he served on the R&D advisory committees for both America East and the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association.

In 2016, Booras joined Mirabel Technologies as national sales manager, and he focused on The Newspaper Manager CRM product line, later adding their Magazine Manager products.

This hire is a reunion of sorts. Booras and Sean Finch, Creative Circle’s VP/sales, worked together for more than a decade at TownNews.

“Having worked with Greg for many years at TownNews, I’m really excited about working together again,” Finch said. “He’s well known in the industry for his knowledge and integrity, and he’s a perfect fit for Creative Circle.”

“We worked closely with Greg on a number of integrations with Mirabel’s systems so he was already pretty familiar with our products and other members of our team,” Ostendorf said. “He’s ready to hit the ground running and help us market our new, unified print and web subscription and paywall solutions as well as upgraded classified, ad server, web CMS and print production systems.”

Of course, Creative Circle is much more than a software provider. Booras is observing several current print redesigns, training programs and consulting projects to learn more about some of Creative Circle’s non-software products and areas of expertise. “It’s really amazing how many ways Creative Circle helps local publishers,” he said.

“Greg and Sean give us a wonderful sales management team. They bring a tremendous history of success, strong customer service and a passion for the newspaper industry to our sales efforts,” Ostendorf said.

Ostendorf has dedicated Creative Circle to helping entrepreneurs and family owners of community media outlets. “We’ve got to save, start and grow local, community media outlets,” said Ostendorf. “News deserts can’t be an option. Hollow, investor-owned newspapers can’t be an option, either. We need more reporters and photographers and editors out there. We’ve got solutions that can help make that happen.”

Booras joins a growing list of new employees at Creative Circle, which is expanding its staff after several years of record growth. The additions include COO Scott Kingsley and developers Heather Swift and Terese Mihalcin, with more to come.

“We’re adding more developers, webmasters and designers in the months ahead,” said Ostendorf. “It’s an exciting time for Creative Circle and for publishers using or upgrading to Creative Circle’s growing range of solutions.”

You can contact Greg Booras at greg@creativecirclemedia.com or 706-600-1776 or Bill Ostendorf at bill@creativecirclemedia.com or 401-316-3333.

ABOUT CREATIVE CIRCLE

Creative Circle Media Solutions is one of the newspaper industry's leading consulting, training, design and software firms, with a 30-year history of success and happy clients on three continents. Creative Circle has redesigned more than 750 publications and more than 650 media-related websites. Staff has led workshops in 23 countries, training thousands of journalists, publishers and ad staffers on a wide range of topics.

Creative Circle's software division has created a full line of web software solutions for media companies, including a user-oriented CMS, citizen journalism, classified advertising, hyper-local, paywall, paid content and reverse publishing solutions. newsroomQ, the newest product, helps bring down the cost and hassle of print production software. It works with both Quark and InDesign and is efficient and easy to learn.

A consistent innovator, Creative Circle was the first media CMS vendor to release a wide range functionality. Additionally, Creative Circle was the first media CMS vendor to offer an integrated paywall, user-contributed content, hyper-local sites, reverse publishing capability and flexible page and story templates that better reflect the news.