Vice President of Interactive Media
McClatchy Company
2003 Catalyst Award, New Media
Chris Hendricks is a visionary leader and business strategist in the ever-evolving and fast-moving world of new media. As a result, he has helped his company, McClatchy, to build one of the newspaper industry’s most successful Internet businesses.
Howard Finberg, another newspaper Internet pioneer, says of Hendricks: “Chris’ role in interactive is one of those great stories that has not been told very well. That’s just a part of his own personality; he doesn’t toot his own horn.”
While Hendricks may not say much about his accomplishments, others do. What they say is that Hendricks has been unstinting in sharing his insights with colleagues, thereby helping digital media to thrive, and that he has helped to expand opportunities for people of color.
After Hendricks joined McClatchy in the early 1990s, he was one of several technology enthusiasts within McClatchy. As the Sacramento-based company began developing its online business, Hendricks became its manager of technology in 1994, helping McClatchy to sort out its Internet strategy. Today, as vice president of interactive media for McClatchy, he oversees the development of the company’s affiliated sites and regional portals. In the process, Hendricks has helped interactive media to become a core part of McClatchy’s business.
Initially, as the media industry moved cautiously online, Hendricks quickly grasped the importance of digital media to newspapers and society.
“All of us back then were trying to build a new business within an established business,” said Eric Grilly, president of MediaNews Group Interactive. He adds that while some media companies tried to build a separate business to compete with existing local media franchises, Hendricks felt that McClatchy should use its existing resources and customer base in building an interactive medium, despite issues of territorialism, cannibalization and competitiveness.
Gary Pruitt, CEO and president of the McClatchy Company, says Hendricks has been invaluable to McClatchy in charting the company’s Internet strategy. “Every step along the way, he has added tremendous value to the company through all of the whirlwind and through all of the turmoil of the tech bubble and the bursting of the tech bubble. Chris has been able to sort out what was real from what was a fad and where McClatchy’s stake in the Internet should be.”
Hendricks has ensured that McClatchy has the leading local Internet site in each of its newspaper markets by making its sites compelling and having the information and services people expect, he adds. “Every six months, it seems to change but every six months, Chris is ahead of the curve. As a result we have among the most successful Internet operations in the industry, both in terms of revenue and cash flow.”
Finberg, managing director of the Digital Futurist Consultancy, first met Hendricks in the mid 1990’s at an industry consortium on technology. Hendricks’ willingness to share business strategies and financial information--what worked and didn’t work--“helped set the pattern and tone of those meetings,” Finberg recalls.
More recently, Hendricks has served on the Newspaper Association of America’s board of directors of the New Media Federation and Diversity Committee. Earlier this year, Hendricks received NAA’s New Media Pioneer award. That award recognizes an individual “whose vision and commitment to mentoring rising leaders have inspired other members and set the groundwork for the (new media) industry’s continued success.”
Hendricks also has mentored minority managers through NAA’s James K. Batten Leadership Development program.
Currently Hendricks is the senior partner for Mary Goodwyn, an assistant metro editor at The Richmond Times-Dispatch. Goodwyn says Hendricks “has been a catalyst in my career.” She says that when she visited Hendricks in Sacramento, as part of the program, she observed him coaching children in his neighborhood. “I could see in their eyes the admiration and the positive impact he’s had. He’s been like that with me, behind the scenes cheering me on and pointing me in the direction I needed to go.”
Pruitt says Hendricks has helped to diversify McClatchy’s management, newsroom and interactive ranks by identifying and attracting people of color to McClatchy. “The majority of our publishers are women and 20 percent of our executive group are people of color. We have a long ways to go, but we’re ahead of most companies. Chris has helped… raise the profile of diversity as a business and journalistic imperative.”
Orage Quarles III, president and publisher of The News & Observer, which is owned by McClatchy, adds: “We’re always looking to pass the baton on and to bring others up and keep moving forward. Chris readily accepted that challenge to make sure that people of color and women were getting access and opportunities to move on to bigger and better things, if you will, and making sure they understood the importance of what’s going on in technology.”
Whether Hendricks is charting a new trail in the digital realm or being an advocate for diversity, he continues to lead, by example, by helping others and by giving back to his industry.
“He’s been an inspiration to me,” says Quarles. “And I’m old enough to be his father.”