Steve Gray, former managing publisher of The Christian Science Monitor and former managing director of API’s Newspaper Next project, consults, speaks and writes about solutions to media disruption from lifelong experience.

It began with a part-time darkroom job in high school at his family’s newspaper, The Monroe (MI) Evening News. That led to a journalism degree at Medill and then 25 years in the ranks of the family business, rising from reporter to editor to CEO.

From 1997 to 2005, he was managing publisher of The Christian Science Monitor, introducing a variety of new business models in the attempt to sustain one of the best — and one of the earliest disrupted — newspapers in the U.S.

From 2005 to 2009, he was managing director of the Newspaper Next project for the American Press Institute. He was the principal author of N2’s two major reports on how to respond to media disruption, “Blueprint for Transformation” and “Making the Leap Beyond ‘Newspaper Companies.” While at API, he led Newspaper Next strategy and innovation workshops for 25 newspaper companies and more than 5,000 media executives.

Since 2009, he has been a full-time consultant with Morris Communications, coordinating a major strategic transformation in the newspaper division, Morris Publishing Group. He also assists other newspaper companies in framing and launching their own strategic transformations.