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WILKES-BARRE — A newspaper industry industry veteran with a diverse background including advertising and marketing experience has returned to the Times Leader Media Group as the organization’s new circulation director.
Nanticoke native Lorri Palovchak comes to the paper most recently from the Luzerne County Transportation Authority, where she was manager of public relations.
“We are extremely lucky to be able to add a person of Lorri’s caliber to our team,” Times Leader Media Group Publisher Mike Murray said.
“In addition to her general newspaper circulation knowledge, her service and communication expertise will aid us in providing an even better customer experience for our readership,” Murray added. “We look forward to her joining us.”
Palovchak, who previously worked at the Times Leader as single copy marketing manager in 2003-04, is enthusiastic about her return to the publication.
“I think the Times Leader is an incredible product. We need to make sure we can deliver that incredible product to the customers,” she said. “We need to have top-notch customer service and get them the paper when they need it, because we know people depend on it.”
Palovchak is a 1982 Greater Nanticoke Area graduate who spent two decades moving around the country and overseas with her late husband, Frank Vandermark, who served in the U.S. Air Force.
She began her newspaper career while the couple were living in Biloxi, Miss.
“I was a military wife and we were looking to make some money, so my husband and I became adult carriers,” Palovchak recalled.
It was at the time when the Knight-Ridder chain, which owned the Biloxi paper (and formerly owned the Times Leader) was switching from youths to adults as newspaper carriers, she explained.
“My husband was in computers, so we literally started computer billing before anyone else did and we turned our route into a business,” Palovchak said. “We got so good at it they started giving us routes that went down. We would fix it up and build it up and give it back to them.”
That led to a promotion.
“I was the first carrier ever hired as a district manager,” Palovchak said. “I worked in home delivery and I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of success, and I liked building routes and building carriers.”
Palovchak also participated in what that paper’s editor called “total newspaper training,” a program that allowed leaders in each department to learn how every other department operated. It would lead a path to a new career in the next town.
“I really enjoyed my time in advertising. So when we left Biloxi and went to Colorado Springs, I tried my hand at advertising,” she said. For the next five-a-half years she sold advertising to the military market for a military newspaper there.
Next was Belleville, Ill., and another Knight-Ridder paper where Palovchak worked as a single copy manager.
From there the family moved to Germany, “where there weren’t a lot of newspaper openings,” she said, but Palovchak did operate a gas station on a NATO base.
Stateside once again, it was back to the couple’s native Northeastern Pennsylvania, and a year at the Times Leader.
Palovchak worked for a family business for a time, and then at West Side Career & Technology Center as their career resource recruiter.
She later became a certified trainer for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, working in emergency management for such events as flood recovery and the 2015 Papal visit. In that year she joined LCTA, initially as a marketing coordinator.
But it also was a year marked by deep personal loss.
“My late husband was one of the 22 veterans a day who take their lives,” Palovchak said.
She is active in the veterans community, and works on suicide awareness with veterans groups.
“It’s very dear to my heart,” Palovchak said.
Last year she married David Palovchak, and the couple live in Swoyersville.
“We are fully committed to NEPA,” said the mother of two and grandmother of three. “This is home.”
For that reason, Palovchak is focused on how to meet the needs of existing and future customers of the hometown newspaper.
“I’m pretty technical. I get news on social media, I get news on the Internet, but I also need to have a newspaper in my hands,” Palovchak said.
“My vision is to make sure that we continue to get the product in front of current subscribers but also new subscribers, make sure Millennials know what it’s like to have a newspaper in their hands and also promote the community service that we provide,” she added.
“We need to make sure that our customers know that we care.”