Sysdeco Media Group President Clive Segal said two systems have been installed at A-Pressen properties and that the company was happy with the result.

"What they're not happy with is that we can't make last year's financial results go away," said Segal, referring to 1995's loss of $39.2 million and the reported loss of $4.6 million for the first half of 1996.

Sysdeco executives in Norway were working with A-Pressen's management to assuage their fears, Segal said.

Germany's Deutsche Bank stepped in, rescuing the funds with a $200 million bailout -- and broadening its ties to Sysdeco. In the ensuing furor over the management of Mgam's holdings, it was discovered that through various Mgam funds and its own holdings, Deutsche Bank now owns 51 percent of Sysdeco.

Weary investors in Oslo greeted this news warmly, as it meant an end to the stock-price roller coaster ride Sysdeco had given them over the last year. The reason: Norwegian securities laws allow investors to demand that anyone who acquires more than 50 percent of a publicly traded company purchase the remaining shares at the stock's highest price of the previous year.

Sysdeco's Segal sounded like the bank-based ownership arrangement might be a good idea.

"It causes us no particular distress as a company, because if we had a long-term relationship with Deutsche Bank it wouldn't be bad," he said. "Their assets were $500 billion last year. They could stand to afford us."

Sysdeco Media Group,
(617) 275-2323.

-- dmc

SII board chair out; four execs back

New President Frank Washington continues to put his mark on System Integrators Inc., the Sacramento, Calif.-based supplier of publishing systems that he took over in July.

In addition to his ambitious plans to market publishing systems to the cable television industry and purchase an equity position in the company (see The Cole Papers, September 1996), Washington has begun his transformation of SII personnel.

Washington has begun reorganizing the board of directors, brought back four top former SII executives and hired another executive with cable TV experience.

Some highlights:

Washington said he believed that a "senior executive in a number of newspaper companies" would be joining the board shortly and that the other shareholders -- Bank of America, Chase Manhattan Bank and Cerberus Partners L.P. of New York -- "are entitled to put up their own person."

Sanders lead the R&D team from 1986 until 1991, when he became general manager of SII's Telco Division. The Denver-based division was created to sell publishing systems software to Yellow Pages publishers, but closed in 1993 shortly after SII's Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing.

System Integrators Inc.,
(916) 929-9481,
e-mail: sii@sii.com.

-- dmc

DataTimes sold to Bell & Howell

DataTimes Corp. of Oklahoma City, a longtime supplier of newspaper text archiving systems, has been sold to the Bell & Howell Co.

DataTimes will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bell & Howell's UMI Co. business unit, based in Ann Arbor, Mich.; it was formerly owned by Oklahoma Publishing Co.

In addition to its archiving systems, DataTimes has been a successful provider of on-line news databases. UMI has a service similar to DataTimes' that focuses on journals and other periodicals.

Recent installations of the EyeQ Publisher system have included a full-text database for all of Time Inc.'s New York-based magazines, and an intranet electronic archive for the Connecticut Post, a 75,000-circulation morning daily in Bridgeport owned by Thomson Newspapers.

In June, DataTimes announced an alliance with the Associated Press that would supply newspapers with text archiving systems from DataTimes and image archiving systems for the AP.

DataTimes,
(405)749-6320, e-mail: jmpaschal@datatimes.com.

-- dmc

Designers deliberate

With the conference hotel already sold out (nearby accommodations remain available), the 1996 Society of Newspaper Design Workshop and Exhibition looks like a winner.

Kicking off the three-day meeting Oct. 17-19 in Indianapolis is the organization's all-day "Selling By Design" symposium that provides design techniques for display advertising design.

The opening session Friday will highlight "observations" on "Where are we going?" by Marty Petty of Connecticut's Hartford Courant and Dale Peskin of the Detroit News.

The Friday lunch meeting will have dual keynote addresses, from Mario Garcia of the Poynter Institute and Nanette Bisher of the Orange County Register in Southern California.

Eight sessions titled "Basic Training" will give those new to page design a rundown in the fundamentals of information graphics, typography and visual editing.

Pagination case studies will look at both the large and small newspaper experience.

New media -- specifically the World-Wide Web -- will be discussed extensively, with a review of web design tools by Bill Skeet of the Knight-Ridder New Media Center and presentations on web site structure and storytelling.

For more information on the SND workshop, call the society at (401) 276-2100, send e-mail to snd@plink.geis.com, or point your web browser at http://ws2.starnews.com/snd/.

-- dmc

Bit bucket ...

Real bits: At Phoenix Newspapers Inc., Howard Finberg has been promoted to director of information technology (he'd previously been senior editor of information technology); Finberg now sits on the company's operations committee. ... At the Honolulu Newspaper Agency, Rick Padden has resigned to become systems manager for Lehman Communications in Longmont, Colo. (Longmont Daily Times-Call). ... At the Sacramento Bee, Nevin Gill leaves to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors; Gill, the paper's publishing systems manager, had been with the Bee since 1984. ... At the San Diego Union-Tribune, Ralph Imhof has been named production director; he'd held a similar position at the St. Petersburg Times. ... At the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger, Pre-press Director Tom Cusack has been elected president of the Scitex Graphic Arts Users Association. ...

New media mavens: Roger Fidler, the longtime Knight-Ridder executive who founded KR-T Graphics, PressLink and the Information Design Laboratory, has taken a teaching position at Kent State University in Ohio. ... At the ABC Television Network in New York, Brent Petersen has been named vice president of photography and new media; previously he'd been director of photography. ... At Times Mirror Co. in Los Angeles, Mike Liebhold has left to take a position with Netscape Communications Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. Liebhold had been the publishing company's chief technology officer; at Netscape he'll be acting director of media and publishing strategic relations. ... At the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, Paul Jerome has been named publisher of the web publications department; previously he'd been suburban editor. ...

Vendor vibrations: At Augment Systems Inc. of Westford, Mass., Colin Murphy has been named vice president and general manager of the pre-press division; most recently Murphy had been sales director with Optronics. .... At Digital Technology International of Orem, Utah, Jim Knudsen has been named client services director; he replaces Jeff Carpenter, who is now client services director for Europe. ... At Edgil Associates Inc. of North Chelmsford, Mass., Linda Gagnon has been named vice president of sales and marketing; previously she had been the director of those activities. Also at Edgil, Marcia O'Donnell has been named a sales executive, Dale Blanton has joined the company as manager of customer services and Jim Bervik has joined the company as a customer service engineer. ... At Newspaper Technologies Inc. of Calgary, Canada, Jeffrey Nelson has been named director of sales; previously Nelson had been circulation director for Thomson Newspapers in Canada. ... At Scitex America of Bedford, Mass., Shimon Alon has resigned; the parent company's senior vice president and president of its Graphic Arts Group said he was planning to pursue entrepreneurial activities. Also at Scitex, Pat Kareiva has been named president and CEO of the Scitex America division. ... At SoftAd Inc. of Mill Valley, Calif., Bill McNey has been named vice president and general manager of the company's media products area. McNey is the former vice president of advertising at the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, where he researched sales force automation on behalf of corporate parent Knight-Ridder Newspapers. ...

Confabs: MediaWorks -- the show that combines the meetings of the Folio Show, the PRE Conference and Inside Media World -- is Oct. 8-10 in New York. In addition to the big trade show, each of the disciples (magazines, pre-press and new media) will have their own concurrent meetings. For more information, call (203) 358-9900. ... IFRA96, the big newspaper technology trade show in Europe, is Oct. 14-17 in Geneva. The show has more than 230 exhibitors; speakers at the congress include Susan Clark-Jackson of Gannett Newspapers and David Jones of the Mirror Group in London. For more information, call (011) 49 (6151) 733-6 or send e-mail to 100546.2247@compuserve.com. ... "Beyond the Printed Word: Journalism and Business On-line" is a two-day symposium sponsored by the World Association of Newspapers (formerly Fiej) and IFRA in Geneva. Speakers include Terry Schwadron of the Los Angeles Times and David Richardson of News Datacom Research. Contact IFRA at the numbers above. ... Delphi Seminars will have three days of sessions addressing workflow, business process remodeling, implementation methodologies and developing a request for proposal Oct. 15-18 in Washington, D.C. For the scoop, call (217) 247-1025, or point your browser at http://www.delphigroup.com. ... The 57th annual New England Newspaper Operations annual meeting is Oct. 20-22 in Newport, R.I. Call (860) 225-6027 for more information. ... The first (and they hope annual) America West Newspaper Operations and Technology Conference is Oct. 23-25 in Reno, Nev. Session topics include digital photography, quality control, time management, new media, database marketing and zoning. Speakers include P. Anthony Ridder, chairman of Knight-Ridder, former U.S. Rep. Ed Foreman and the editor and publisher of this very journal. For details, call (916) 449-3684. ... #

"When did you start having deep fears that the terms 'ROI' and 'Web site' should not be used in the same sentence?"
-- John Dodge, PC Week.

From THE COLE PAPERS, October 1996, Copyright © 1996, All Rights Reserved.