Mike Jung has led the nomadic life so many newspaper people know. After growing up and attending college in the San Francisco Bay Area, he did stints across the country at newspapers from Florida to Southern California before being hired by the San Jose Mercury News in 2001.

Along the way, he spent nearly two years at the Akron Beacon-Journal. “Sometimes I consider that my best sales job ever: getting my wife to come out to Akron, Ohio, with me,” Jung said.

Most recently, Jung, 53, was the publisher of the Santa Cruz Sentinel, an award-winning paper on northern California’s rugged coast.

Jung, who has a journalism degree from San Jose State University, was named the new publisher of the Idaho Statesman in August. Since his move to Boise, he’s also started serving on the boards of directors for the United Way of Treasure Valley, the Idaho Shakespeare Festival and The Idaho Foodbank.

Jung’s daughter, Kendall, is a senior in high school and his wife, Gretchen, is a kindergarten teacher in San Jose so, for now, Jung is commuting back and forth between Boise and the Bay Area while mom and daughter finish their school years. The Jung family also includes two sons — Cameron, 21, and Taylor, 20 — who are both attending college.

What are your impressions of Boise so far?

Someone said to me early on that Boise is easy and, almost to a T, it fits that — it’s easy to meet people, easy to navigate. ...

I kind of laugh. People who have lived here a while complain about traffic. I haven’t seen it yet, compared to California.

Boise’s a very intimate place. Even though there are 200,000 people in the city and 600,000 in the metro area, it feels like a really intimate, inviting city.

I love being outdoors ... being able to run beside the river along the Greenbelt, hike up Table Rock or golf. I really look forward to exploring and participating in all the treasures of Idaho.

Where would we find you on a typical weekend?

I would be Downtown at the Co-op or at the farmers’ market — that’s kind of a cool place to be. I would also be down on the Greenbelt running or jogging. I don’t have my bike here yet, so I’m not on the trails yet. When BSU is in town, I’m going to be part of the Broncos’ game day.

How does working in this market compare to working in Santa Cruz and the San Francisco Bay Area?

This is a delightful combination of both the state capital and a college town. There’s a real energy behind that, whether it’s statehouse politics or the college, so that’s one big difference. There’s also a spirit of collaboration (in Boise). People roll up their sleeves and get things done.

Who are your role models?

I look a lot at athletes and sports figures to follow a path, whether it’s someone like Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus, because of the passion they have for the game or the hard work ethic, or, in Arnie’s case, what he did for the sport by being an ambassador, and just how they honed their tools to build on their craft.

What drew you to newspapers?

I entered San Jose State wanting to be a sportswriter and kind of switched gears, probably in my sophomore year. I wanted to move more into copywriting and working for an ad agency. I had done work for the school newspaper, selling advertising for the Spartan Daily, so that became my first exposure to print advertising.

When I was with Mervyn’s (in the advertising department), we bought print media, so I was working with the L.A. Times, Orange County Register, Long Beach Press-Telegram. ... I became interested in the other side of it.

What do you like about working in newspapers?

It’s definitely the people — both the people I work with inside the building and the people I work with outside the building, whether it’s our business partners or community leaders or our non-profits or political leaders.

Newspapers have a big role in the community, not only as the chief communicator, but also setting policy, setting agenda. It’s very gratifying knowing we have an important place in the community.

What are your goals for the Statesman?

I’ve been here for just a few weeks now, so the first one was to listen to employees internally and listen to clients externally, to hear what’s working and what’s not working.

The end goal is really to continue to be the premier and one of the most credible sources for news and information in the Treasure Valley. And as we hopefully build a bigger audience, we’d like more business partners to invest with us.

I understand you’re a big proponent of social media. What do you hope the Statesman does with social media?

I believe that our digital strategy is really a combination of our website, our e-edition, our apps and our social media. Social media has a different role than our website. There’s a different purpose for it, whether it’s Twitter or it’s Tumblr or it’s Facebook, there’s just a level of engagement that’s different. It’s not just about the news or breaking news; it’s commenting and dialogue.

How do you see the media landscape changing in the next decade?

It’s dynamic, that’s for sure. It’s dynamic and changing on the fly, and sometimes it’s hard to keep up with. Whether figuring out the content or platforms to use or the laws that impact us with regard to human resources or copyrights, it’s a challenge to stay on top of all the different aspects of the new digital world.

There’s no clear-cut solution, and I think it will require a big investment on the part of the newspaper in terms of our resources to dial that in.

What’s the last book you read?

It’s a golf book called “The Match” about a famous match between two professionals and two amateurs. The book details the match hole-by-hole and how it came down to the last hole. But really, it’s the story of these four individuals.

It sounds like I’ve been remiss in not asking about your passion for golf.

Yeah, I love to play, love reading about it. I’m a fairly average golfer. I think I’m a 17.4 (handicap). I’ve been able to play a few times here already at BanBury, Falcon Crest and Crane Creek. I just enjoy getting outdoors and seeing the scenery and getting together with friends.

Do you have a motto you live by?

No, but my parents have always instilled in me something as simple as the Golden Rule: Treat others as you want to be treated; be good to others.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given that you didn’t take?

I listen, and I will take anybody’s advice if it’s going to help me personally or the organization. I’m a big fan of continuous learning, being curious and seeking out best practices.

Was it hard to leave northern California?

Sure. A lot of my family still lives in the Bay Area; that’s the tough part. And it’s pretty scenic there. You’ve got the ocean and the mountains and a lot of cultural diversity there. So it was hard but, like I said, Boise’s been a great find and a great fit, and I really do love this area. It’s been a great start, and I really do look forward to spending a lot of time out here.

How do you keep the Statesman relevant in the digital age?

I think it’s by engaging the employees and encouraging them to be curious as well, and to paint a picture that includes print but also places a lot of emphasis on the digital transmission of our content. The content will drive the audience, and it’s the platforms of how we deliver it that will build that audience.

The content, whether it’s stories and editorials and photos and videos, is what we’re very good at, and now it’s a matter of packaging it and delivering it in ways people want to receive it.

It’s a very exciting time for us, but it’s a time of being curious, learning and continuing to transform with the changes that are in front of us.

You increased the Sentinel’s print and digital audience. Did circulation rise, and how did you do that?

Both circulation and print grew, and then the digital audience and the mobile audience grew as well.

I don’t like to take credit for it, but the way we grew, and the “we” is the team, on the print side, it goes back to the content. We had excellent content, both stories and photos, and we marketed — we were very aggressive with our marketing.

Using the same content, it translated well into the digital side.

The revenue grew as well, both digitally and on the print side. It was creating custom packages for business clients for print and online and some creative enterprise packages and positions, both print and online, that grew both of those positions.

It’s not separating the two. It was integration of the two and that doesn’t just mean bundling things where the print goes online.

It’s integrating them into an audience solution where business can take a look and understand our print audience delivers these folks and my digital audience complements that, because they’re affluent, they’re educated, they’re homeowners, but they’re slightly younger than the print audience is.

You mentioned aggressively marketing the Sentinel, and I know newspapers aren’t always the best at marketing themselves. How do you get better at marketing the newspaper?

I think it’s a combination of ways. Is it using the newspaper to leverage that? Sure it is. But it’s also using the different forms and different vehicles that we have, whether it’s using online or using social media.

I think it’s important that newspapers are a big part of the community. I know the Statesman is a big advocate of the community and a big sponsor of events, so we’re very visible. Also, the operating committee and I give back to the community, whether we serve on boards, non-profits, or are active within the community.

How do you build a revenue stream from the digital side?

You almost have to take a step back and build it from inside the building from a cultural view. A lot of us were trained when we were a print-only world, and, now, for us to embrace a print-digital specialty publication market is a lot different. It’s a cultural change, whether you’re an advertising sales rep or you’re a reporter because your world now becomes a multi-media environment.

In terms of product or audience solutions, it’s about packaging them and delivering a larger audience. Customers will pay for that and invest in that if there’s a return for that. We haven’t figured out the golden goose yet, but we are moving toward more robust solutions that include both print and digital.

What would you say to a college student thinking about getting into the newspaper business right now?

There are so many opportunities as a journalist or, if you’re a marketer or in sales, because if you can write compelling stories, if you are a storyteller, there will be a place for you in the business. And if you are a bright, enterprising sales and marketing expert, there’s also a career for you in our business because we are changing so quickly. We are not just a newspaper anymore, and, as we transform the company into this multimedia company, we’re looking for bright individuals on the journalist side and the sales and marketing side.

Heath Druzin, a former Idaho Statesman journalist, is a freelance writer in Boise who has reported from Louisiana, Idaho, the Middle East and Central Asia, not necessarily in that order. He spends as much time as possible on the trail, in a yurt or screaming down a snowy slope.