Boulder City Review, Review-Journal has new publisher

The Boulder City Review has a new publisher.

Boulder City Review owner GateHouse Media, which also owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal, announced today that Jason Taylor of Gannett Co. will take over as president and publisher of the papers on July 6.

Taylor also will serve as president of GateHouse’s Western United States newspapers division, as well as president of a new company division called GateHouse Media Live and Virtual Events. The division will put on expos and other events for the local community.

Taylor, 40, takes over for James Hopson, who has served as interim publisher since April.

GateHouse Media CEO Kirk Davis said the company appointed Taylor to his new position because he “cares deeply about excelling in local journalism, and he has an extraordinary track record of being involved in the communities he’s served.”

Prior to joining the Review-Journal, Taylor was president and publisher of the Clarion-Ledger, a Gannett-owned paper in Jackson, Miss. Taylor also was East Group regional president, overseeing the Hattiesburg (Miss.) American and Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser.

Taylor has also held executive positions for the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press and the Honolulu Advertiser, and is the former general manager of The Times in Gainesville, Ga. He began his career at The Daily News Journal, a Gannett paper in Murfreesboro, Tenn.

Taylor is married with three children ages 11 to 15.

He said the decision to relocate his family wasn’t easy.

“But we have such an opportunity to move the Las Vegas market forward,” he said. “There’s so much opportunity to shape the community here.”

Taylor’s appointment comes three months after GateHouse’s $102.5 million purchase of former Boulder City Review and Review-Journal parent Stephens Media. The acquisition gave GateHouse an additional eight daily newspapers and 65 weekly publications in seven states.

GateHouse parent New Media now has 125 daily newspapers — about 9 percent of the nation’s 1,380 dailies — and more than 500 community and niche publications in more than 415 markets nationwide.

The Review-Journal, Nevada’s largest media outlet, is the company’s largest newspaper, with a Sunday circulation of 184,000 and an average of 10.5 million monthly Web page views, though New Media announced on June 3 that it also plans to buy the publishing operations and assets of the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, which has a Sunday circulation of 235,000. The deal is expected to close later this year.