Hellbox, June 1996

More trouble at supply firms

Further turmoil roiled the world of major supply firms in May, with a top executive beginning to move out of the picture at one company and layoffs at another:

Sysdeco: Johs Jamne, the chief executive officer of Sysdeco AS of Oslo, Norway, announced May 21 that he would be resigning. Last year, Sysdeco expanded its European holdings with the purchase of SyPress of Norway, and entered the U.S. market with its acquisitions of Atex and Dewar Information Systems.

"I stood up and took responsibility," said Jamne after an emotional board of directors meeting at which the company's 1995 losses were discussed (see The Cole Papers, May 1996).

Jamne won't be leaving the company anytime soon. One of the key architects of Sysdeco's move from a maker of software development tools to a purveyor of computer systems for publishers, Jamne has been asked by the board to stay on as chief executive for at least six months.

"I'm putting together a new management team," Jamne said in a phone call from Cambridge, England. "I'll do now what I had always planned to do, just faster."

Jamne said the plan had always been to recruit an executive team from the United States to run Sysdeco's U.S. business; now, Jamne said, the board has indicated it wants the new U.S. management team to run operations worldwide.

Jamne and other Sysdeco executives said the company was close to hiring a new chief financial officer and that the search for the rest of the management team would be accelerated.

In addition, Marlowe Einelund, a senior Sysdeco executive who has lived in Salt Lake City for many years, has relocated to Boston to be near Sysdeco's new U.S. headquarters.

The company disclosed that for 1995, Atex Publishing Systems had revenues of $19.2 million and earnings of $2.2 million. The company said first quarter 1996 results for Atex were "strong" and predicted that Atex would be "profitable" for the year.

System Integrators Inc.: In one more move to save money, SII laid off 20 workers in mid-May.

"We've been trying to figure out how to do the same work with fewer people," interim chief executive Erika Williams told the Sacramento Bee, SII's hometown newspaper. "We had borderline profitability ... [so] we're adjusting our expense structure."

In a phone interview, Williams said the layoffs were all "back office" personnel, with no one being laid off from research and development or customer support.

This is the second round of layoffs at the company this year (see The Cole Papers, March 1996); it is estimated SII now has about 200 employees worldwide.

In other SII news, Williams announced that Jack Pritchard had been named chief operating officer and Steve Nilan had been named vice president of marketing and business planning and development.

-- dmc

Cole to co-sponsor new media seminar
Next fall, The Cole Papers will co-sponsor -- with the prestigious Seybold Seminars -- a day-long conference on newspaper new media issues.

The seminar will be held in conjunction with Seybold San Francisco on Monday, Sept. 9, at the Center for the Arts, which is in the Moscone Center convention complex. The Seybold main conference starts on Tuesday, Sept. 10. The trade show starts Wednesday, Sept. 11.

At the Cole/Seybold sessions, newspaper executives will learn how newspapers are adapting to a world without ink and presses -- but continuing to support ink-on-paper activities.

Seminar topics are:

Digital Dilemma -- As the number of newspapers on the World-Wide Web and commercial on-line services grows, publishers need to continue to support profit-making activities like printing newspapers and delivering inserts. How do newspaper executives reconcile the costs and energies devoted to new media when the technical infrastructure of the newspaper is in such disarray?

The Classified Secret -- Classified advertising and new media seem like a perfect match: a luscious stew of constantly shifting data, indexed and easily searchable. The problem? Existing classified front-end systems cannot do the indexing -- and indexing engines can't take orders.

Let's Start a Daily -- As recently as a decade ago, the barriers to entering a market and starting a daily newspaper were immense: The acquisition of a press, mailroom equipment, a fleet of trucks and even editorial and classified front-ends were multimillion-dollar ventures. Today, with outsourcing and the judicious use of technology, a daily paper can be founded with little start-up capital.

The Problem is Suppliers -- How come the traditional suppliers to the newspaper industry have had such a hard time adapting to open systems and platforms? Why haven't they provided newspapers with new media solutions? Why are they going out of business?

The sessions will be moderated by the editor and publisher of The Cole Papers.

Seybold Seminars is part of the Softbank Exposition and Conference Co. For more information, write Seybold Seminars, Softbank Expos, 303 Vintage Park Drive, Foster City, Calif. 94404, or visit the web site at http://www.seyboldseminars.com/.

Seybold Seminars, (800) 488-2883.

-- dmc

Some things you should know
(The following is reprinted from the July 1991 edition of The Cole Papers, which was the first paid issue.)

In a scene early in The Greatest Movie Ever Made (Citizen Kane), neophyte publisher Charles Foster Kane (portrayed by Orson Welles) earnestly scribbles down a statement of principles for his newspaper.

Neither scribbled in crayon nor remotely resembling a statement of principles -- and destined never to see a hot-lead composing room -- here are a few things about The Cole Papers I think you should know:

It will be a lively, informative, entertaining, accurate, useful and honest tool to explain the rapidly converging worlds of publishing, technology and journalism.

Humans weren't designed to run computers. The Cole Papers is designed to help reporters, writers and editors cope with -- and maybe overcome -- this fact. Every story I publish will have the end-user in mind -- not the guys who designed or bought the box.

Publishers don't know enough about technology; technologists don't know enough about publishing. The Cole Papers will explain the technology so any copy editor (or publisher) can understand it, and explain publishing so any programmer (or manufacturer) can understand it.

After a dozen years at the San Francisco Examiner, I left to become a consultant to newspapers. This monthly is not a full-time job and working with publishers and technology is still something I'll do. But I cannot reconcile publishing an independent newsletter and taking money from companies that market their products directly to the publishing industry. Since May (1991) I've turned down all offers from players such as System Integrators, Leaf Systems and Harris Composition. (When given the chance, I will work for makers of CPUs -- such as Apple and Sun -- because they don't sell directly to publishers.) If in covering industry news I sense a conflict-of-interest, I will be quick to note any connections I might have.

Advertising will not appear in The Cole Papers, though occasionally I may send readers accurate promotional literature which I find equally valuable and inoffensive.

My meager stock investments have not included media companies or vendors of pre-press products, nor will they ever as long as I'm in the business.

In the end, Charles Foster Kane proved something of a rogue. I intend no such role for myself. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I see that the principle thing I have in common with him is girth.

But, to quote an infamous UPI story, "now you know."

-- dmc

Bit bucket ...
Latter-day Lennanes: With all the downsizing going on at System Integrators Inc., it was inevitable some folks would start out on their own; here's a roundup of former SII workers: Larry Applegate, Ernie Brock and Robin Henson left the company in 1988, after being part of the research and development team dedicated to pagination. They wrote a font manipulation package for the Mac that was marketed by LetraSet, and then started a business called Ares Software Corp., which developed and sold the font manipulation programs FontMonger and Font Chameleon. The latter technology so intrigued Adobe Systems Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., that last month the huge software company bought out the trio and their partner; the three from SII now will be working for Adobe. ... After five years at SII, Cassandra Myer has started her own business, Cipher Consulting Service of Sacramento, Calif. Myer has inked an agreement with Pongrass Newspaper Systems of Australia and SII to sell the Pongrass classified pagination product to SII customers. ... And Karl Costenbader is now founder and president of Competent Consulting of Sacramento. Costenbader, a longtime SII engineer, has written the FaxAction product that is being sold by Associated Information Systems International Inc. of Auburn, Calif. ... Also at Competent is Erin Gall, former manager of worldwide marketing communications at SII. ...

Inside the insiders: At the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Craig Branson has been named publications director. Branson formerly was a copy editor in the features department of the Lakeland (Fla.) Ledger. He replaces Elise Burroughs, who moved across the hall to become assistant managing editor of Presstime, the Newspaper Association of America's monthly (Asne shares office space with NAA in Reston, Va.). ... Burroughs replaces Nancy Davis, who was promoted to managing editor. ... At The News-Gazette in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., Cole Papers Senior Editor Pete Wetmore becomes night news editor, overseeing production of a new zoned morning edition, then helps prepare the day desk to produce two long-standing afternoon editions. ...

Confabs: In a precursor to the precursor, the Simba/NAA Workshop will be June 13 in Las Vegas. Called "Best of Breed Content, Strategies and Business Models for the Electronic Future," the speakers will include Jim Banke of Florida Today in Melbourne, Neil Budde of the Wall Street Journal, Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles Times, Howard Finberg of Phoenix Newspapers and Clark Lambert of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times. For the digital details, call (703) 648-1239. ... Connections '96, called "Greetings from the digital edge," is June 14-15 in Las Vegas. Speakers will include Lincoln Millstein of the Boston Globe, Lee deBoer of the New Century Network, Peter Levitan of Journal Square Interactive and Amy Rabinovitz of the Houston Chronicle. Call (703) 648-1239 for details, or point your browser at http://naa.org/. ... NEXPO '96, the clambake to which this issue is devoted, is June 15-19 in Las Vegas. If you need a registration form, call NAA's fax-on-demand system at (301) 216-1824. ...

Errors & Omissions: In our piece last time about Intranet archiving systems, we used last year's name for a product from SRA International -- IntelliSearch -- instead of this year's name -- Intermezzo. We also indicated that U.S. News & World Report and the Chicago Tribune were SRA customers. This information was provided to us in a questionnaire SRA filled out last fall; now the company says neither publication is a customer. ... In our piece about the reorganization of the news operation at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, we misspelled a source's name; it's Bernie Lunzer and he is now secretary/treasurer of The Newspaper Guild in Silver Spring, Md. And in the Bit Bucket, we misspelled the first name of WeatherData's Mendy Moyer. ... We regret these errors and will be preparing the hari kari knife shortly. ... #

"There are a lot of people who get the computer and end up diddling with it for the rest of their careers. We have guys like that at the Miami Herald. They used to be functioning, practical reporters, and they mutate ... from journalists into computer people."
-- Miami Herald Columnist Dave Barry, quoted in ComputerWorld, May 20, 1996

More trouble at supply firms

From THE COLE PAPERS, June 1996, Copyright (c) 1996, All Rights Reserved.