DDM, Deseret News chief Clark Gilbert wins innovator award

SALT LAKE CITY — Clark Gilbert, president and chief executive officer of Deseret Digital Media and the Deseret News, has been named the recipient of this year's Borrell Associates' Innovator of the Year Award for local online media.

He will accept the award this week at the 2011 Local Online Advertising Conference in New York.

This is the second year for the award — which is given to "an individual who's exhibited the greatest innovation in a local online media company and executes its strategy in a financially viable way."

Borrell Associates selects the recipient after examining the growth patterns and innovative characteristics of more than 4,400 local online operations across the U.S. and Canada over the previous year, a news release states.

"Clark has driven his company to an unequaled level of success for any local media company over the past year," said Borrell Associates CEO Gordon Borrell. "The local media industry needs great leaders and superb innovators, and Clark is the hands-down choice this year for his work in Salt Lake City."

Headquartered in Williamsburg, Va., Borrell Associates is a research and consulting firm focusing in interactive advertising and marketing.

"It's a real tribute to our whole team," Gilbert said. "People are looking at what we've done in Salt Lake with our integrated (online, print and broadcast) newsroom and digital innovation and said, 'News organizations have to transform themselves.' "

He said the integration strategy could serve as "a model for the future" for other newsrooms around the country.

"It's really important that media organizations find ways to go where their readers are. Readership will increase when they can access information in multiple ways," he said.

Gilbert became president and CEO of the newly created Deseret Digital Media in 2009. The company oversees the websites of DeseretNews.com, KSL.com, DeseretBook.com, MormonTimes.com and LDSChurchNews.com, as well as other Internet properties for Deseret Media Companies.

He was named president and CEO of Deseret News in May 2010.

The newspaper and other media properties under Gilbert's leadership are all owned by the business arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Prior to taking on his current role, Gilbert was an associate academic vice president at Brigham Young University-Idaho and was a professor of entrepreneurial management at the Harvard Business School.

Gilbert will accept the award March 3 during the opening session of Borrell's 2011 Local Online Advertising Conference.

e-mail: jlee@desnews.com