A group of six newspaper companies has banded together to pool research on new information delivery technologies.

The companies represent seven of the 50 largest newspapers in the country. Participating are A.H. Belo Corp., Central Newspapers Inc., Cowles Media Co., Freedom Communications Inc., McClatchy Newspapers Inc. and Pulitzer Publishing Co.

The group will be called Pafet -- Partners Affiliated for Exploring Technology.

"Our purpose is to maintain and strengthen our competence in collecting, packaging and marketing information, making use of the best of evolving technologies available," said James Rosse, president and chief executive of Freedom, who will be the first chairman of the Pafet management committee.

"It's our intention to explore and analyze all technological opportunities to better deliver our services," said David Lipman, chairman of Pulitzer/2000 and a member of the Pafet operations committee.

The group will endeavor to "expand our core businesses of newspapers and free television," Lipman said.

Rosse said, "Pafet will give us a mechanism for obtaining and exchanging research information related to new technology across our organizations. We believe that a modest investment in such joint research and information analysis will enable each company to make better individual decisions."

The Pafet management committee includes Rosse and the chief executives of the consortium companies, including Robert Decherd of Belo, Frank Russell of Central, David Cox of Cowles, Erwin Potts of McClatchy and Michael Pulitzer of Pulitzer.

Heading the Pafet operations committee as chairman will be Patrick Irestone, vice president of new business development of the Star Tribune. Other members include Dean Blythe, vice president of business development at the Dallas Morning News; Howard Finberg, senior editor of information technology at Phoenix Newspapers; Dick Jablonski, vice president of information systems at the Orange County Register, and Sylvia Chavez Sitters, assistant to the executive vice president of McClatchy.

The group will be coordinated by industry consultant Alan Flaherty of ComPlan Inc. of Los Angeles.

-- dmc

Thirty: After traveling extensively in the United States to close some deals for his company, Martin Dann, the general manager of QED Technology Ltd., complained of headaches and went home to Southampton, England. There he collapsed, and died a day later after never regaining consciousness. Dann was 42 and left a wife and two children. Doctors said the cause was a burst blood vessel in his brain. Dann had been with QED for the last nine years; before that, he was with Linotype for five years as U.K. newspaper systems sales manager. ...

User Groupies: The System/55-System/25 Users Group Inc. elected Barry Abisch of Gannett Suburban Newspapers, White Plains, N.Y., to assume the post of vice president at the fall meeting. Abisch will succeed Christopher Caneles of the San Francisco Examiner, who will take over as president. Outgoing president John Klenk of the Toronto Star will take the position of treasurer for the coming year. Nevin Gill of the Sacramento Bee was re-elected secretary. Arline King of San Gabriel Valley (Calif.) Publishing Co. was elected to the group's board of directors; incumbent director Mike Wilson of Phoenix Newspapers Inc. was re-elected. Caneles named Ed Holzinger of Fayetteville (N.C.) Publishing Co. as the appointed board member. ...

Vendor Variables: Andy Smith, longtime Atex employee in the Far East and most recently the company's chief operating officer for the Americas, has left the company. Smith, a native Briton, decided it was time to live in his home country for a while. The company says it won't replace Smith, but Ian Anderson, the senior vice president for strategic planning, will move from the U.K. to the U.S. and will take over many of Smith's responsibilities. ... Also at Atex, Ed Easley has been named national accounts manager. Easley worked for the old Washington Star, TalStar, System Integrators, Integrated Newspaper Systems International and Atex once before. He has been back at Atex since 1991. ... At CText, Jimmie Garner, former vice president of sales, has been named vice president of group newspaper development. Taking Garner's sales veep role will be Ed Rowden, who'd been senior director of sales. ... Peter McSherry, formerly with Atex and Monotype, has landed at North Atlantic Publishing Systems Inc., where he's handling technical marketing. ... Printware Inc. has two new engineering executives: Alex Koss has been promoted to mechanical design manager and Rod Cerar has been promoted to director of platesetter engineering. ...

Company news: Advanced Prepress Systems Inc., the company founded by Malcolm McGrory when he left Hyphen (see The Cole Papers, November 1992, December 1992) and Cascade Systems Ltd., the British company founded by Richard Patterson when he left Hyphen, have agreed to become Cascade Systems International. McGrory's end of the business -- called Cascade Systems Inc. -- will move its headquarters to 1 Corporate Dr., Andover, Mass. 01810 (phone is [508] 794-8000). The new company has been appointed "advanced developers" of Adobe Acrobat technology. And did we forget to say that Phil Rugile, late of Hyphen, Cybergraphic, Crosfield, CMP Publications, Time Inc. and points south, went to work for McGrory a couple of months back? He now has some vague marketing responsibilities at Cascade. ... Harris Publishing Systems Corp. and Brite Voice Systems Inc. have agreed to joint marketing of pre-press and audiotext systems to newspapers in North and South America. Under the agreement, the companies will develop an interface between the Harris Cash classified ad system and the Brite Electronic Classified Select Series System, allowing customers to enter data once for use by both applications. ...

Installs: Atex Publishing Systems Corp. of Bedford, Mass., has sold CrossTarget -- a graphical, multi-dimensional data analysis and reporting tool -- to the Washington Post and the Canadian publisher, Southam Newspaper Group of Hamilton, Ont. CrossTarget is made by Dimensional Insight; Atex is a value-added reseller for the newspaper industry. ... DuPont Newspaper Systems of Nashua, N.H., has sold a Whirlwind Advertising System to the Chronicle Of Higher Education, a weekly with a circulation of 130,000. The Chronicle will run Whirlwind on 21 workstations that are a mixture of PCs, Macintoshes and Sun SPARCstations. ... The Los Angeles Times and Integrated Systems Solutions Corp. (Issc) of White Plains, N.Y., have announced an agreement whereby Issc will design and implement a classified order entry and classified pagination system based on CText's AdVision OS/2 client/server system. CText Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich., entered into a joint marketing and technology partnership with Issc in June 1993. The companies say the Times installation will consist of more than 500 workstations. ... Managing Editor Software of Jenkintown, Pa., says it has sold four copies of its Page Director software to the Kansas City Star and one copy of its Page Director Ad Layout System to the Times Argus of Barre, Vt. ... System Integrators Inc. of Sacramento, Calif., has announced sales of three new systems and an upgrade of an existing customer's system. The New Zealand Press Association will install SII's Tandem-based Editorial Synthesis 66 and 37 terminals of SII's OS/2-based MTX workstation software to deliver the news to its member newspapers. The Elmira (N.Y.) Star-Gazette, a 35,000-circulation morning daily, has purchased SII's Advertising Synthesis 66 XR and nine of SII's Windows-based RoadRunner '486 workstations. The Journal and Courier of Lafayette, Ind., a Gannett 38,000-circulation morning daily, has purchased an Advertising Synthesis 66 XR with 10 RoadRunner terminals. The Copley Los Angeles Newspapers (the Daily Breeze of Torrance, the News-Pilot of San Pedro and The Outlook of Santa Monica) will upgrade an existing System/55 to one based on Tandem's RISC technology. In addition, the papers have purchased AdSpeed for display ad makeup, Scoop for output control and INL for editorial pagination. ...

Confabs: Advertising Age magazine is sponsoring New Media Expo ("Find your future on the digital superhighway") April 12-14 in Los Angeles; call (617) 449-6600 to find your future. ... The Newspaper Association of America's annual conferences on pre-press technologies and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI -- the way you'll get your ad orders in the not-too-distant future) will be combined this year, April 13-15 in Orlando. The keynote address will be delivered by Eric Wolferman of Gannett, with sessions that will include Tom Cusack of the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger, Jeff Adams of the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, Susan Shows of the Houston Chronicle, Karl Kuntz of the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, Mary Ann Skinner of Newsday and Ashley King of the Detroit Newspaper Agency. And, hey, there's a trade show and it's on the Disney property; call NAA at (703) 648-1000. ... The New York Press Association will hold its annual convention and trade show April 15-16 in Albany; call (518) 464-6483 for details. ... If your travels take you to Australia, check out the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association's annual Pantech meeting April 19-22 in Surfers Paradise, New South Wales. Call [61] (2) 959-4396 for the Down Under details. ... The Nebraska Newspaper Publishers Association holds its meeting and exposition April 22-23 in Lincoln; call (402) 476-2851 for info. ... Ohio State University is sponsoring a two-day Photoshop training course with Karl Kuntz (see above) April 23-24 in Columbus; call (614) 292-8571 for highlights. ... On-Line Publishing '94, the Graphic Communications Association's forum on electronic publications, is April 25-28 in New York; call (703) 519-8160 for on-line info. ... #

From THE COLE PAPERS, April 1994, Copyright (c) 1994, All Rights Reserved.