Dave Sickle and Joe Nealon have been promoted to take on new responsibilities in the circulation department of Times-Shamrock Communications, Chief Operating Officer Donald Farley announced Thursday.
Sickle, the circulation director at The Republican-Herald for the last nine years, will add management of the Hazleton Standard-Speaker circulation department to his duties.
Nealon, who had been leading the circulation team in Hazleton, will take over The Times-Tribune circulation department in Scranton while continuing to manage The Citizens’ Voice distribution operation in Wilkes-Barre. He will also oversee circulation for Times-Shamrock’s community newspaper, the Wyoming County Press Examiner, as well as ADI, the company’s contract delivery service.
Sickle, 38, will oversee about 160 carriers for both the Hazleton and Pottsville papers. Originally from Wilkes-Barre, he lives in Pottsville with his wife, Jesseca, and two sons, Justin and Ryan.
Sickle started in newspapers with the Gannett media holding company. In 2005, he took his first circulation director position with a Gannett newspaper in Ithaca, New York. But it was family still living in Wilkes-Barre that brought him back to the region in 2007 to direct the Pottsville circulation team.
“That was a major, major factor to coming back,” Sickle said.
Subscribers can expect to see better service and delivery because of the shifting responsibilities, Farley said while announcing the changes. The restructuring is part of a strategy to make circulation departments more effective with circulation directors more centrally located to their subscribers, he said.
Nealon, 47, will oversee 225 to 250 carriers delivering newspapers in Lackawanna, Luzerne, Wayne and Wyoming counties as well as parts of Monroe, Pike and Susquehanna counties.
He and his wife, Rose, live in Duryea with their three children.