Production All-Stars, Senior Manager: Jon Markey

By: He followed his father's foot- steps ? all the way to the top of his trade. A carrier as a child, the teenager entered the world of Linotype operator and composing room chief. More than a half-century later, the paperboy had become president of a newspaper company.

After learning the ropes, rising through the ranks, and fostering Army Times Publishing's expansion and move into printing, Jon Markey tried commercial printing, from business forms in Virginia to ad inserts in Oregon. Having broken into management with the advent of cold type, he was soon back at newspapers. "I landed in Gannett in 1980, as part of the crew at Gansat," Markey recalls, referring to the operation that would put a new newspaper ? one that would change all others ? into the hands of readers nationwide. "The key," he says, "was being able to manage the incoming images to be able to set a halftone curve for the presses that were out there."

Soon after, he took Gannett Offset commercial printing into the big leagues, adding plants, printing more USA Today copies and boosting business from $3 million to $35 million in four years. He then left for a different sort of commercial printing ? this time picking up experience in heatset printing and binding. He was serving as president of an insert printer when "The Record came calling in the spring of 1992," he says.

"I basically told Mac I really wasn't interested in going to New Jersey," Markey says of his talk with Malcolm Borg, North Jersey Media owner and former publisher of its flagship daily. But he visited Borg's new Rockaway plant, talked to his family, and made the move. He was sharing Borg's big bet. The costly plant and equipment were commissioned in time to see newspapers plunge into their worst slump in decades.

"We had no business at the time," Markey remembers. Within 60 days, the first job was contracted, followed by Investor's Business Daily and USA Today. Business came to $9 million that first year and kept growing. Markey took on sales responsibility, and in 1996 was named president. Capacity was added in time for the purchase of the Herald News and a stable of weeklies.

Meanwhile, the group was the industry's first to run SAP business software. Two years later it installed a Mactive ad system, then ppi workflow and a PBS circ system.

"The last big piece," says Markey, "was the decision to close Hackensack manufacturing" and put new Wifag and Ferag technologies in Rockaway, saving more than $7 million per year. "That was kind of my last hurrah."

"One of the great things" about the family, he adds, is that when technology could be shown to make a difference, "I don't know that I ever got turned down."

According to Borg, Markey turned demoralized production crews into award winners, instituted full-time safety management, and knocked down waste levels, even personally training reelroom personnel on how to extract the most from each roll.

As much as anything else, the familiar figure at ING, Ifra and Nexpo trained those who would follow. Three became vice presidents. "John was always about building for the future," says Brent Woodman, who came up under Markey at Gannett in the 1980s and joined him again in the 1990s.

Most satisfying, says Markey was assembling "such a tremendous group of people" ? who skiied to work in snowstorms and walked 10 miles in the worst weather, even the great nor'easter of the early '90s. When Hackensack lost power, it sent pages, people and trucks to Rockaway. "By the time we were done, we were an hour late ... on the street." On such occasions, he says, execution often exceeded the nightly norm.

Markey encourages people to push themselves, says Woodman, who now runs AFL Printing's Secaucus, N.J., plant and benefitted from Markey sending him to management programs. He cites Markey's mastery of building relationships, his "keen ability to listen," not just hear people out, and a knack for making subordinates feel like the team members they need to be.

And when his first wife died, those people "turned out and looked after me and my sons," he says. They were there, too, not long after, when one of those sons died. "That was part of the strength of the company."

Career Highlights
Wilmington Sunday Star carrier, 1950s; learned composing, camera work
Army Times production editor, 1963; oversaw change to cold-type, '69; named assistant production director, then printing and packaging manager, 1970s
Ran forms, insert printers
Joined nascent USA Today operation, 1980, rose to production director
Led Gannett Offset '84-88
Exec for magazine printer
North Jersey Media Group: manufacturing vice president, 1992, president, 1996-2007
Operates consultancy in Weeki Wachee, Fla.