Boerne Star welcomes Parra as new publisher

BOERNE – Jeff Parra, 55, a veteran of newspaper advertising and management, has assumed duties as publisher of the Boerne Star. 
Daniel Philhower, vice president and controller of Granite Publications, the management company for the Boerne Star, made the official announcement.
“With more than 25 years experience in the newspaper business, Jeff has a strong publishing background with experience in marketing and advertising,” Philhower said.
Parra replaces Brian Cartwright, who was named advertising director at the New Braunfels newspaper.
Parra said he plans to extend the reach of the Star and continue to focus on more local content. “It is very important to be the number-one source of news and information in our community,” Parra said. “We will continue to be a community newspaper that represents its community and build on that.”
Parra said that since he arrived in Boerne he has been impressed with the active business community and seeing people patronizing those businesses during the day and weekends. “Some markets I’ve been in, on the weekend it’s a ghost town,” he said. “I am really looking forward to living in this community because it looks like they know what they are doing.”
Parra started in the newspaper business as a major accounts coordinator, handling advertising at The Joplin Globe in Missouri before moving to St. Louis, where he was promoted to regional advertising director of the St. Louis Suburban Journals, a group of regional newspapers.
He then became associate publisher at the Bartlett-Cordova Appeal in Memphis, Tennessee. He moved on to Mount Clemens, Michigan as president/publisher overseeing four papers, then to Waxahachie, Texas, as a regional group publisher for several papers, then to Muskogee, Oklahoma and the LaGrange Daily News in LaGrange, Georgia before coming to the Star.
A Marine Corps veteran, Parra served from 1983-1988 in the 3rd tank battalion and left as a sergeant. Prior to joining the Marines, he attended Blinn Junior College in Brenham and Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.
He has two grown sons.