When longtime executive Gracia Martore stepped into the CEO role for what was then Gannett in 2011, she knew the company needed one thing most of all: boldness.
“Like many companies, we had become defensive. We were afraid to take risks, afraid to be bold,” Martore said. “I think one of the most important things that I did during the early days of being a CEO here was to change that conversation and change the mindset that we were no longer on the defensive, that we were on the offensive.”
She had inherited a multibillion-dollar media company that had cut thousands of employees, reducing staff by some 15,000 between 2007 and 2011 in the wake of a historic recession that sent the newspaper industry reeling. It was in the midst of that tumult that Martore took the reins from Craig Dubow.
The idea of becoming a CEO was never really on Martore’s radar. She graduated from Wellesley College with a double major in history and political science, then launched her career in banking. But she was open to new responsibilities, and when she joined Gannett in 1985 as assistant treasurer, those responsibilities gradually grew until 2011, when she rose to chief executive.
It was Gannett’s innovation that drew her to her first post there. “This company was a real meritocracy,” she said. “They don’t care about your pedigree, they care about the job you do. And if you do a great job, you are going to get other opportunities.”
It wasn’t always an easy climb. When Martore took her first job at Gannett, her oldest child was just 18 months old. At the time, Gannett was based in Rochester, New York. Martore and her husband lived in Virginia. She thought there was no way she could travel up and back for the few months until the company moved to Virginia. But her husband, Joseph, was supportive. He worked to figure out ways to care for their child — grandparents and friends — to allow her to say yes and embark on a new phase in her career.
That resourcefulness has helped them both with their respective career paths, Martore said. She and her husband now serve in top leadership posts at their respective companies — he as president and CEO of Alexandria IT company Calibre Systems Inc.
“I have been incredibly fortunate that I have found that supportive partner,” Martore said. “I think when you have that kind of support from both people, it enables you to do much more than you think you can do.”
For Martore, it enabled her to also hit the ground running as head of Gannett. As one of her first moves as CEO, she gathered the management team and embarked on a multiyear effort to fundamentally transform the company and better prepare it for an uncertain future. The goals were to invest in growth opportunities, diversify its portfolio of television stations and focus on creating original, local content.
In 2013, Gannett acquired television station company Belo, more than doubling its TV portfolio in a single purchase. That day, Gannett’s stock rose 34 percent to close at $26.60, the biggest one-day gain it saw in five years.
“I think we changed the conversation around the company,” Martore said. “It was one of the best acquisitions that year for sure.”
In 2014, Gannett bought out its corporate partners for $1.8 billion to assume full ownership of Cars.com and also announced it would split the company into two — Gannett would be the publishing business and Tegna (NYSE: TGNA), the television and digital platforms.
That split was complete in 2015. Martore went to helm Tegna. As CEO of the newly split brand, Martore helped guide Tegna toward original content and programming before announcing her retirement on Sept. 7.
The announcement came on a high note as she simultaneously disclosed she would work to spin off Cars.com into its own publicly traded company based in Chicago and explore the sale of Careerbuilder before she steps down.
“I feel as though I have done everything that I have wanted to accomplish here,” she said. “Now I am going to leave it to other people to take these companies to the next level.”
Her biggest piece of advice for a young executive? She refers to her early days in banking, when a vice president told her, “Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want your mother to read about on the front page of The Wall Street Journal,” she said. “That stuck with me on so many levels. And when you read about executives at Enron and others, I wonder if they would have done it if they thought about it that way.”
As Martore prepares for the next step — she plans to retire officially in mid-2017, following the completion of the Cars.com spinoff — she envisions meaningful charity work in her future and may also sit on the boards of other companies, to lend her experience and expertise.
“My family and I have always been focused on the homelessness issue and particularly on family homelessness,” Martore said. “I would like to think that my legacy after this would be to make life better for families in difficult straits and situations.”
Four questions with Gracia Martore
What’s the most difficult business decision you’ve made? When I was CFO, going through the 2008 and 2009 period. The economy was in the greatest recession since the Depression, but at the same time, the media industry was undergoing tremendous change and transition. Our cost structure had to be reduced as our revenues were under pressure. We also had to realign resources to make sure we could be successful in the future rather than continue to do the same things we were doing. And downsizing a company is always incredibly difficult. The people issues, and wanting to make sure the people who had to exit the company understood that we valued their contributions and cared about them as human beings, but at the same time we had to change skill sets and do the things we needed to do to become a stronger company. Just as it was difficult for them, we wanted to make sure that for the 30,000 people left, we had a very strong company — and we accomplished that. But that was very, very difficult.
What is the role of a CEO during any layoff or workforce reduction? What [employees] want to know is, No. 1, that the CEO understands the impact and isn’t just oblivious to it. No. 2, that they have hope, that what you are doing isn’t just to help that particular quarter and it doesn’t really change the trajectory of the business if you are going through difficult times. No. 3, they want to make sure you have a strategy — and a strategy that will lead to a better future for the company. Because you’re not just dealing with employees, you are dealing with their families. And during the transformation of our company, one of the things we always talked about as a leadership team that every decision we were making not only impacted employees but their families as well. So we had to focus on making the best decisions possible.
What can media companies do to build trust with the public? That’s something we think about a lot here and particularly in this campaign season — I think media has been, in some ways, unfairly cast as the villain. But none of us can look away from Pew surveys and others that say trust in media is at a bit of an all-time low. As a company and an industry, I think we have to be tremendously careful of what we report and how we report it and fact-check ourselves to make sure we are not just fanning the flames of the issue, but also showing the other side of issues.
Was becoming a CEO one of your career goals? I’ve been incredibly fortunate in my life. I didn’t start off my career and say, “You know what? In 30 years, I want to be the CEO of a company.” I just said that no matter what I do — and I started in banking —
I have to love what I do and do whatever job I had incredibly well and pour myself in it. I believed if I did that, people in the organization would notice and give me other opportunities.
Gracia Martore: The basics
- Age: 65
- Years at Gannett/Tegna: 31
- Positions in that time: Assistant treasury, vice president in the treasury group, vice president of investor relations, chief financial officer, president and chief operating officer
- Family: Husband Joseph, two children
- Education: Bachelor’s in history and political science, Wellesley College
- Boards: The Associated Press, FM Global and WestRock Co.
- Roots for: Boston Red Sox