Mike Hertz lived a full life, with a long successful career and many moments of support in the communities he lived in and loved.--NEWS FILE PHOTO
Mike Hertz graduated from high school in 1968 and has four years at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. He spent 13 years in the hospitality industry managing hotels and restaurants across Saskatchewan for a hospitality management company based in Moose Jaw.
Mike started his career in newspapers in 1987 as an advertising representative for the Moose Jaw Times Herald. He worked for four years as the director of sales and marketing at the Prince Albert Daily Herald in the early 1990s, increasing that newspaper’s market share of the print media from 67.5% to 80.2%, while at the same time increasing revenue by 72%.
He then was promoted to become publisher of the Swift Current Sun, where he took a newspaper on a downward slide, redesigned and relaunched all the products, tripled the revenue in three years, and turned the newspaper into a profitable entity again.
In October 1996 he was appointed publisher of the Medicine Hat News and has since worked for Southam, Hollinger, Thomson and now the Alberta Newspaper Group. With the help of a dedicated management team, Mike turned a 12% profit margin into a 32% profit margin within one year. This newspaper now consistently has a profit margin in the mid to high 30s.
In 1999 he became group publisher, taking over responsibility for the Lethbridge Herald as well, again doubling the profit margin to the mid to high 30s from 18% within one year.
In November of 2000 he became senior vice president and group publisher for all of southern Alberta, including the community group and the Shopper. With the exception of very few short periods of time, his properties have consistently shown substantial growth in both revenue and profit through the publishing of new revenue publications and astute control of expenses. Mike retired in December 2018 but was still working part-time from home as a consultant to the ALTA Newspaper Group LP.
Mike had an extensive history of community involvement, including president of the Moose Jaw Chamber of Commerce and Moose Jaw Tourism Bureau, member of the Moose Jaw, Prince Albert and Swift Current Chamber of Commerce executive committees, Rotary member in Prince Albert, Swift Current and Medicine Hat, and past director of the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce.
He participated on the Medicine Hat Hospital Board as a board member for a few years in early 2000s. He was also involved in the Medicine Hat Rotary Club and served on a number of local committees from 1997-2020.
Mike and his wife Nancy have two sons – Jason, 42, with a political science degree from the University of Lethbridge and working in Medicine Hat as general manager of Servus Credit Union on 13th Avenue, and Cregg, 39, with management and marketing diplomas from Medicine Hat College and working in Medicine Hat as a driver for Black Dog Delivery Service.
