Bit bucket ...

WolferWire: When I heard Eric Wolferman was leaving Gannett Co., where he'd been director of production systems for the last four years, I called right away. "What about support for WolferWire?" I asked. He shot right back: "Did you ever buy a service contract?" Wolferman, a former reporter and editor, wrote the Macintosh program for wire collection, he had said, while flying around on airplanes visiting Gannett's 82 newspapers. If that doesn't show commitment, then consider that he did this programming on a Mac Portable, which proves they could be used for things other than doorstops. Wolferman freely distributed WolferWire to many of Gannett's papers, where it was used primarily to get text out of front-end systems and into the Mac. In trade for a subscription to this newsletter, he lent me a copy for use on a college daily I was helping out. Fortunately the collegians decided to use another application, because I doubt that they would get any bug fixes from Wolferman now: Last month, he was named senior vice president of technology at the Newspaper Association of America, replacing George Cashau, who plans to retire shortly after NEXPO '94. ...

Post partum: Kevin Edwards has been named manager of pre-press systems at the Washington Post; he'd been a programmer/analyst at the Post, and was previously systems editor of the Dallas Times-Herald. Edwards replaces Jim King, who had been named director of newsroom technology a few months back. King replaced Rich Martin, who's become manager of newsroom networking. Also at the Post, Raleigh Schein, formerly the paper's director of advertising operations, has moved over to Digital Ink, the subsidiary responsible for Post and Newsweek new media ventures. She's the director of operations at Digital Ink. ...

Missing links: Gone from PressLink, the on-line service for news, graphics and photos, is President Rick Blair. Also leaving the service is Michael O'Bryon, who was among PressLink's founders. O'Bryon, a longtime Miami resident, couldn't make the move to Reston, Va., when the service headed north last year. He'll be consulting with corporations on imaging issues as well as returning to his first love: sports photography. ...

Mercury rising: Longtime San Jose Mercury News Systems Editor Bob Hucker has chosen to leave our profession and go into one filled with deadlines and collaborative work: He's becoming a full-time computer programmer. Hucker, who got a graduate degree in computer science at Stanford while at the Mercury News, had been an assistant news editor at the Kansas City Star before going to San Jose in the mid-'80s. ... The newly installed publishing systems manager at the Mercury News is Tim Benjamin, who was reorganized out of a job at the San Francisco Newspaper Agency two years ago; in the meantime he's been consulting, mostly with the state. ... Benjamin replaces Jack Barton, the paper's longtime publishing systems manager, who is now pagination systems manager. ...

Real bits: The new editor of technology and production at the Albuquerque (N.M.) Journal is Donn Friedman; he'd been assistant design director. ... Also at the Journal, Carolyn Flynn has been named AME/presentation (she'd been design director). ... New associate editor for electronic news at the Hartford Courant is Mark Del Vecchio; he'd been the bureau chief in Avon. ... And at the San Diego Union-Tribune, Adam Horwitz has been named pagination systems manager. ... New deputy director of the Knight-Ridder/Tribune Photo Service in Washington is Giuliana Nakashima. ...

Vendor views: At Information International Inc., Richard Ritterbush has been named vice president of sales. Ritterbush has been with Triple-I since 1972 and has held a variety of sales positions with the company, including national sales manager for newspapers, his most recent title. (Veep of sales had been Steve A'Hearn's old title; A'Hearn has been veep of marketing for a couple of years.) ... At Ultre*, a division of Linotype-Hell, Debra Rampulla has been named sales and marketing administrator; she'd been with the parent company. ... Also at Ultre*, Steven Ting has been named manager of international sales for Asia; he too had been with Linotype-Hell, where he'd been an engineer. ... At DataTimes, co-founder John Mark Paschal has been named senior vice president of system resources; he'd been a mere vice president previously. Also, the company named Wes Crews vice president for corporate development, Tim Bradbury vice president for business development and Brad Watson vice president for information sales and marketing. ... At System Integrators Inc., Jesse Stansbury has been named a regional sales representative for middle-market systems in the Northeast; he'll be based in Pittsburgh and had previously worked in the direct marketing operation. Also, a few months back, Erin Gall was promoted to manager of marketing direction; she'd been in sales support and educational services previously. ...

Company news: Information International Inc. announced a "breakeven" first quarter for 1994. Compared to the first three months of 1993, the company made $21,223 (on sales of $11.2 million) instead of losing $49,227 (on sales of $7.4 million). ... PrePress Solutions acquired the assets of Tegra Inc., Varityper Inc. and PrePress Direct Inc. in April following bankruptcy. The new company will continue to support Tegra and Varityper equipment as well as sell systems through its PrePress Systems! direct-marketing sales force and the PrePress Direct! catalog; most of the employees of the old companies were retained. ... Scitex Corp. Ltd. announced an unaudited net profit of $15.3 million (on sales of $164 million) for the first quarter of 1994; this compares with an unaudited net profit of $30.2 million in the first quarter of 1993. ...

Confabs: A seminar called Quark XPress Unleashed will be held June 9-10 in St. Louis, June 16-17 in Portland, Ore., and June 23-24 in Toronto. Call the Graphic Communications Association at (703) 519-8160 for details. ... For those into the workstations called Sun, try SunWorld June 13-18 in San Francisco; call (800) 225-4698 for a little light on Sun. ... The annual meeting of the National Press Photographers Association is June 15-19 in Albuquerque, N.M. Speakers include the ubiquitous Karl Kuntz, managing editor for graphics at the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, whose topic is "Taking the darkroom into Photoshop," and Neal Pattison, managing editor of the Albuquerque Tribune, who'll speak to the question, "How to kill photojournalism at your newspaper." Contact the Nppa at (800) 289-6772, or Joan Carlin at (505) 823-3640, to get focused on the program. ... Unknow if there are still slots, but if you're doing either pagination or color reproduction you might want to see if there's space for you at the Society of Newspaper Design's annual Color & Pagination Camp, scheduled for June 16-18 in Providence, R.I. The chair is Bill Ostendorf and he's at (401) 277-7315. ... If you didn't get enough of UNIX boxes at SunWorld (see above) you could try NextWorld, which will be in San Francisco (where else?) June 21-23; call (800) 767-2336 for Next news. ... And there's a little trade show in the desert June 25-29. You just might want to attend NEXPO '94, the Newspaper Association of America's annual clambake, this year in Las Vegas. Call NAA at (703) 648-1000 for the lowdown. ... #

"Are we journalists, or are we an art club?"
-- Ed Kohorst, Society of Newspaper Design director, quoted in the May issue of SND Update regarding the future of the organization.

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