Vol. 5, No. 8, August 1994

True Lies

The biggest things at NEXPO ’94 were the Arnold-sized rumors

After almost four years of buying nothing -- nada, zip -- we, the newspaper industry, strolled into the Las Vegas Convention Center June 25-29 and expected our suppliers to have spent tons and tons of money on research and development, thereby producing wondrous new toys with which we could make our own enterprises more efficient and therefore more profitable.

It could have happened.

Yes, here and there -- mostly in the smaller booths, frequently at tables in booths run by other people -- we found innovation in publishing pre-press systems at NEXPO ’94.

But mostly we found the same old stuff (albeit, as one conventioneer said, "It’s the same stuff as last year, but this year it works").

This person was among roughly 12,000 in attendance, according to NEXPO’s sponsor, the Newspaper Association of America. But that number included those registered for the concurrent meetings of classified and co-op managers, and chief financial officers.

The most startling aspect of the conference and trade show was the rumors. From the 11 a.m. Saturday start until the show closed at 3 p.m. Wednesday, we were inundated with speculation, theories and -- frequently -- outright lies.

Company Z, the sages were saying, was out of money. It would shut down within 60 days. (Flacks for Company Z laughed when told this one.)

Information International Inc., the rumor mill ground out, was being sold to competitor Monotype Systems Inc. (Triple-I and Monotype’s parent, IPA, did make an agreement for IPA to handle some European sales for Triple-I.)

Rumor mongers said System Integrators Inc., the longtime provider of front-ends that entered Chapter 11 reorganization last fall, was going to be shut down by its banks. (SII announced at NEXPO, as we report inside, that it had completed a consensual reorganization plan that reduced to $20 million its pre-Chapter 11 debt of $85 million.)

But the best one was that DuPont Newspaper Systems, the bastard child of the mergers of Hastech, Composition Systems Inc., Crosfield News Systems and Camex, was shutting down and putting its Whirlwind front-end system up for sale.

Within 48 hours of the show’s close, that one came true. DuPont executives confirmed that they were "exiting" the front-end and monochrome scanner business and closing the ImagiTex facility in Nashua, N.H.

DuPont says it has "signed letters of intent" for both Whirlwind and the monochrome scanner businesses, and that it hopes to transfer them to new owners by the fall. Workers in Nashua were told that they'd be out of work by the end of August.

We'll be following this one, as the loss of another front-end supplier affects us all.