On-line advertising services to merge
In a further consolidation in the on-line world, AdOne LLC of New York and PowerAdz.com LLC of Rensselaer, N.Y., announced in late October that they would merge, creating a single newspaper on-line application service provider with a client base of more than 1600 newspapers.

The new company is expected to aggregate and deliver on-line more than 1 million paid newspaper classified advertisements daily, generate more than 45 million page views each month, reach more than 1.5 million unique visitors each month and reach 95 out of the top 100 markets in the United States.

Both AdOne and PowerAdz are creatures of the newspaper business. AdOne's ownership reads like a who's who of the industry, including Advance Publications, Belo Corp., Donrey Media Group, E.W. Scripps Co., Hearst Corp., Journal Register Co., Lee Enterprises Inc., Media General, MediaNews Group, Morris Communications Corp. and Pulitzer Inc.

PowerAdz.com's largest single investor is Journal Communications of Milwaukee, publishers of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The new company, which will be named at a later date, will have co-chief executive officers. Brendan Burns, a founder and the chief executive of AdOne, will share the reins of power with Mark Chudzicki, a founder and the president and chief executive of PowerAdz.com.

AdOne was founded in 1995 with funding from friends and family as a newspaper-oriented on-line classified aggregation service. While the company attracted venture capital, by 1998 it still wasn't making money.

At that time, management approached MediaNews Group of Denver to make an investment; MediaNews brought Advance, Donrey, Hearst and Scripps into the mix shortly thereafter. The other companies joined as investors over the last couple of years.

AdOne's merger partner was founded as PowerAdz Corp. in 1996. The company affiliated with newspapers and television and radio stations to provide its CarCast Auto Marketplace.

The next year it began a relationship with Add Inc., a subsidiary of Milwaukee's Journal Communications, which included reselling the AdQuest Classifieds product. In 1998, the two companies merged, making Journal Communications the largest PowerAdz.com shareholder.

-- dmc

Bit bucket ...
"We realize that recent local incidents have caused great concern. We are working to ensure that we provide you with the safest work environment possible."
-- Memo to Gannett Co. Inc. headquarters staff in Arlington, Va., quoted in the Washington Business Journal. The company tested the facility for the presence of anthrax and found nothing.

Top cats: At the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, Janet Owen has been named senior vice president for operations; most recently, Owen was vice president for operations at California's Fresno Bee. In earlier lives, Owen was in production and technology at USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the San Jose Mercury News and the Los Angeles Times. ... At the South Pacific Post in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Bob Howarth has been named managing director. Previously Howarth was the editorial technology manager for Queensland Newspapers in Brisbane, Australia, and before that, editorial technology and training manager for Hong Kong's South China Morning Post. Howarth, who has written for this august journal about assisting journalists in war-torn East Timor (see The Cole Papers, April 2000), is also the founder of the world's first daily Braille newspaper. He has edited the monthly Braille Mail in Brisbane for the last nine years. ...

New media cats: At Michigan's Lansing State Journal, Fred Menko has been named new media director; previously the on-line project manager, Menko has been with the paper since 1997. ... At Cox Interactive Media of Atlanta, Claudine Langan has been named regional manager for the east, supervising ActiveDayton.com, OSO.com, Pittsburgh.com, allnva.com, HRtide.com, GoCarolinas.com, AccessAtlanta.com, icFlorida.com, GoPBI.com, SoFla.com and InsideNewOrleans.com; previously the television veteran had been general manager of allnva.com (Northern Virginia) since November 2000, and before that was city site manager for AccessLasVegas.com. ...

Vendor cats: At Kodak Polychrome Graphics of Norwalk, Conn., Ira Goldman has been named director of business development; previously Goldman had spent three years as the company's worldwide director of marketing for film and before that, 29 years with Eastman Kodak Co., where, among other things, he was photojournalism market segment manager. Taking Goldman's place as worldwide director of marketing for film is John Cross, also a vet of Eastman Kodak. ... Mactive Inc. of Melbourne, Fla., has announced a raft of new hires. Robert Heinz has been named a software engineer; previously he was with Harris Publishing Systems Corp., where he spent three years as a software engineer and prior to that, 14 years at the Electronic Systems Sector of Harris. Don Dobesh has been named finance manager and chief financial officer; previously Dobesh was with a local company where he had been corporate controller. Bill Bright has been named to a sales support role; previously Bright was with Harris and prior to that, he worked for Times Publishing Co. of St. Petersburg, Fla., as a systems manager. In earlier lives, Bright was with Software Consulting Services, Georgia's Albany Herald and the Sun News of Myrtle Beach, S.C., and was a member of Knight Ridder's corporate technology staff. Andrew Yawn has been named an implementation specialist. Bonnie Evaschuk has been named an implementation specialist and project manager; she was formerly with Harris and Autologic Information International. Jo Lynn Harrelson has been named an implementation specialist; she was formerly with Osteen Publishing Co. of Sumter, S.C. Doris Chin has been named an implementation specialist; she was formerly with Atex Media Solutions. Peter Elwell has been named an implementation specialist; he was formerly with Atex, Foster's Daily Democrat of Dover, N.H., Portland Newspapers and the Portsmouth (N.H.) Herald. Linda Folmar has been named a project manager; she was formerly with Atex and Thomson Newspapers. Sherrill Sahlin has been named a project specialist, focusing on Knight Ridder installations; she was formerly with Geac Publishing Systems, Gazette Direct Marketing Services and the Morton (Texas) Tribune. ... At Media Command Inc. of Tampa, Fla. -- the former Geac Publishing Systems -- David Frenkel has been named chief operating officer for the company's business in the Americas; previously Frenkel was the founder and chief executive of Pentawave, and in earlier lives was with the Optronics division of Intergraph and BestInfo. ... At Net-Linx Publishing Solutions of Ann Arbor, Mich., and Sacramento, Jimmy Connell has been named executive vice president for product engineering; previously Connell had been in research and development at Net-Linx. In an earlier life, Connell was founder and president of a Net-Linx predecessor company, CompuText. Also at Net-Linx, Allan Katzen has been named vice president of global operations; previously Katzen was vice president of client services and has had two long careers at Net-Linx predecessor company System Integrators Inc.: he originally joined the company in 1980 and then left for a five-year hiatus to run SII founder Jim Lennane's word processing software company DeScribe, returning to SII in 1994. Lastly at Net-Linx, Albert de Bruijn has been named vice president for product strategy; he has been with SII and Net-Linx since 1999, and in earlier lives was with Cybergraphic in Australia and did 11 years at Atex. ... At Tribune Media Services of Chicago, David Rosenberg has been named sales manager for Knight Rider/Tribune Information Services; previously Rosenberg was with the Chicago Tribune and in earlier lives had been with Chicago's Pioneer Press, Scholastic Inc. and Financial World magazine. ... At the newly launched True Audience of New York City, Dave Morgan has been named president; Morgan, a co-founder of True Audience, is the founder of Real Media and in an earlier life was with the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association. Also at True Audience are Chief Technology Officer Joe Wilson (formerly with Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive and USA Today) and Vice President for Business Development Greg Gendron (formerly of Real Media). ... At X-Rite Inc. of Grandville, Mich., John Utley has been named chairman of the board; a longtime X-Rite board member, Utley has served as chairman of three other companies. Utley replaces Ted Thompson, who is retiring from the X-Rite board after more than 45 years with the company. ...

Confabs: Comdex, the monster computer trade show, is Nov. 10-16 in Las Vegas. Keynoters at the event include Kunitake Ando of Sony, Dick Brown of EDS, John Chambers of Cisco, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Jeff Hawkins of Handspring, Don Listwin of Openwave, Jorma Ollila of Nokia, Darin Richins of Novell and Meg Whitman of eBay. Oh, yeah: Some guy named Gates will kick the whole thing off. For more information, call (781) 433-1600 or e-mail register@key3media.com. ... The 98th annual convention of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association is Nov. 11-14 in Palm Beach, Fla. For more information, call (404) 256-0444 or e-mail carole@snpa.org. ... The Stanford Course for Publishing Professionals, "Publishing on the Web," is Nov. 11-14 in Monterey, Calif. Speakers include Rich Jaroslovsky of the Wall Street Journal, Jesse Kornbluth of America Online, Ellen Pack of Women.com, Kathy Yates of ITpro and Robert Spears of Business 2.0. For more information, call (650) 725-4301 or e-mail publishing.courses@stanford.edu. ... The Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar is Nov. 30-Dec. 2 in Decatur, Ga. Workshop topics will include sports, lighting, web design, documentary, digital photography and "discovering diversity." For more information, call (404) 982-9359. ... #

From THE COLE PAPERS, November 2001
Copyright © 2001, All Rights Reserved.