Not yet six months into her role as president of US-headquartered INMA, Gannett chief Maribel Perez Wadsworth has taken the chair at America’s News/Media Alliance.

NMA – which added the forward-slash to its name following a merger with the Association of Magazine Media – elected Perez Wadsworth as chair of its board of directors for the 2022-2024 term. She succeeds Toni Bush, who is executive vice president and global head of government affairs at News Corp.

Alliance president and chief executive David Chavern says she has been an invaluable board member and he was “excited for her to help lead the Alliance’s strategy”.

Perez Wadsworth’s more than 25 years of business and industry expertise includes running Gannett’s news division overseeing more than 4,000 journalists across more than 230 local news organisations and the flagship USA Today, of which she has been publisher since 2018.

She was Gannett’s first chief strategy and transformation officer in 2015, and helped architect the publisher’s digital subscription strategy. She is also a leader in the development of women and minority leaders in the newsroom.

“I am a firm believer in the critical and enormously beneficial role journalism serves in a healthy and democratic society,” she said.” As we see the dangers of mis- and disinformation and how they have spread on digital platforms, it underscores even more the need for credible, trusted news sources in our country, especially in our local communities.”

At INMA she followed Australian Damian Eales (News Corp) as president. In an interview with that organisation last week, she spoke of the “unique moment in time” where a confluence of business model pressure and political forces were intersecting to put enormous strain on the media industry worldwide. She also called attention to the need for further gender and racial diversity in the leadership ranks of media companies “as a moral and business imperative”.

• Elsewhere, Cameron Nutting Williams, regional publisher and chief revenue officer of Ogden Newspapers, was elected president of America's Newspapers during its senior leadership conference.