JR Media Solutions Group is an Atlanta-based firm specializing in digital strategy and operations, strategic planning, research services, operational strategy, communications strategy and content and product planning for the media, and those companies providing solutions and services to the media industry.
Our services focus on providing the needed information, data and guidance to assist and support industry executives in making the best business decisions in an ever-changing media landscape.
Our contacts and resources are deep and broad across the media industry, spanning online and print, newspapers, radio and television.
Our Firm
Resources available through JR Media Solutions Group include some of the best and brightest in the media industry, capable of covering a media company’s needs in practically any area of operation or strategy.
Today’s media environment requires quick action, but with deep knowledge and review of options and needs. We deliver the information and support needed to progress and profit in a changing media environment.
John Reetz, President
John is an experienced media executive with strong leadership and an exceptional success record in the industry.
He has a proven history of innovation, collaboration and successful leadership through growth and transitional periods, in both digital and print.
His early career as a reporter and editor at a number of newspapers, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, enabled him to build strong communication, presentation and team-building skills, critical for success of any project.
Prior to founding JR Media Solutions Group, John was General Manager of COXnet, the Internet support and solutions group for Cox Newspapers.
In that role, he built a full-service Internet team and structure supporting 39 Cox Newspapers Web sites, establishing strong working relationships with management, both print and online, of each newspaper property, collaborating on ways to assist their revenue and audience growth efforts by providing needed content, product, tools and infrastructure. His team provided direction for deployment of core enterprise products and tools for all Cox Web sites.
In addition to newspaper Web sites, John’s team provided services and tools to other company media Web sites - both television and radio - and worked closely with his counterparts on television and radio Internet issues and needs.
At Cox, he founded COXnet originally as a collaborative team built around creation of a Wide Area Network built to share content and technology expertise among the 17 newspapers. It evolved into the Internet support unit for the newspaper division.
At The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he created and led the News Operations Department, which included newsroom technology, unified copy desk, image desk and unified newspaper design desk, all part of a newsroom operations team focused on producing the daily newspaper. This was the first all-encompassing such team in the U.S. newspaper industry, and a model and subject of interest and visits by U.S. and international media.
John’s organizational expertise also resulted in his leadership of the newspaper-wide Olympics Operations Committee, responsible for all planning for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
Other large-scale projects include coordination with all Cox papers to build a 92-person “loaners” team from all Cox papers to cover the Olympics, direction of a building-wide project to convert from mainframe to desktop publishing system and collaboration with 17 Cox newspapers to build a structure to use WAN technology and pagination software to share pages, graphics, images and text across all newsrooms.
John was also a senior reporter, covering the environment, government and public policy, transportation, growth issues and politics.
He also served as Managing Editor of the Gwinnett Daily News, a community newspaper owned by The New York Times Co., engaged in a head-to-head battle with the Atlanta newspapers for supremacy in the northern suburbs of Atlanta. Four of five years during his leadership the newspaper was the fastest growing daily newspaper in the United States. Earlier in his career he was City Editor of the Savannah Morning News.
His career also includes additional reporting, editing, management and publishing experience in Texas, North Carolina and Georgia, and ownership of a small newspaper in Texas.