When Jessica Roberts, the newly appointed advertising sales and marketing manager of The Dominion Post, says she grew up in the media business, she isn’t waxing a lyrical spin on her chosen profession.
She really did grow up at WTRF, the Wheeling television station where her dad, Jim Roberts, worked his way up to sales manager, after making the leap from spinning records on the radio.
For her, it couldn’t have had a sadder beginning.
But it ended up being something special.
Her mother, Bonnie, a beloved English teacher at Wheeling Central Catholic High School, died when Jessica was just 9 years old.
That left Jim a single parent for a time: A single parent, with an all-encompassing job.
Which oftentimes meant young Jessie, in her Catholic school jumper, would be doing her homework in her dad’s office, amid the happy tumult (and not-so-happy tumult, sometimes) that constituted the “normal” workday at Channel 7.
She’d work on long division and diagramming sentences while Jim and his colleagues were blitzing to fill that air time, baby.
Nielson ratings. Local ad campaigns and national media buys.
Scribbling copy for the all-or-nothing “spec spot” — to finally (maybe) convince that one car dealer to stop giving all his advertising dollars to the powerhouse Pittsburgh stations next door.
Along the way, she got to know the account executives and the floor directors.
She got to know the guys in the booth sometimes plucked to voice the spots when Jim — who was once known for his snappy radio patter and flashy Corvette before he became a family man — wasn’t there to lend his baritone to the proceedings.
And there were the reporters: Some were lifers and institutions in the market, like her dad.
Mostly, though, they were kids right out of journalism school.
“I want to do this,” Jim’s daughter said.
Start spreading the news …
After graduating from Wheeling Central, where most of the teachers who worked with her mom were still on the faculty, she lit out for Morgantown and WVU.
Her bachelor’s degree is in English education, but her writing skills and all that WTRF-osmosis got her a job in local television as a reporter.
A couple of years in, and she wanted to make a leap of her own: New York City.
Roberts remembered a colleague who wasn’t kind to her career aspirations.
“He said, ‘Oh, you think you’re just gonna go up to the Number One Media Market and land a job?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, but I’m gonna try.’”
She did, doing sales and outreach for a network that provided syndication programming for radio stations across the country.
WVU and graduate school lured her back in 2009.
‘I know you can do this’
The Dominion Post lured her two years after that, before the ink was even fully dry on her master’s degree in journalism.
She started out in marketing and became interim supervisor, then permanent supervisor, of that department in less than a year, because — as she laughs — Publisher David Raese told her she was going to.
The management aspect, she allows, tossed her a bit at first.
“I don’t know if I can do this, Dave.”
“That’s OK,” the publisher replied. “Because I know you can do this.”
In 2012, an opening in the sales department came about, and a certain publisher again enlisted a certain marketing supervisor for the job.
Now, nine years later, that account executive is now advertising sales and marketing manager — and the first woman in the history of the newspaper to hold that job.
“I wasn’t even thinking about that,” she said.
Raese was just thinking about someone with the talent and drive to do the work.
He was thinking about someone who knows how to build relationships between the newspaper and advertisers.
“Jess has been an outstanding representative of the company,” he said.
Telling the story
In turn, she says The Dominion Post is an outstanding employer.
She appreciates Raese’s leadership, she said, and the mentoring force of her predecessor, Brad Pennington, who is leaving to pursue another sales opportunity.
Now, she’s ready for the dance of a new chapter, the part-time Zumba instructor said.
“We have a great sales department and we have a great newspaper,” she said.
She particularly likes the context The Dominion Post brings to readers in a hyper-clickbait age, she said.
And she’ll use her reporter skills to continue the same with her colleagues in her department.
“It’s not any different from the newsroom, really,” she said.
“We’re helping businesses tell their story. That’s what we all do under this roof. We help tell the story.”
TWEET@DominionPostWV
