SII puts a little zing into its media

The venerable newspaper system supply firm System Integrators Inc. will begin marketing to other media under the name mediaZing, the company said last month.

The Sacramento-based company, in fact, is now owned by mediaZing. Last summer's buyout of the four banks that had owned the company since its Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1993-94 created a company called Publishing Systems Inc., which became SII's owner. That company is now calling itself mediaZing.

"SII's name is wonderful and we'll continue to use it in the print area," said Frank Washington, SII's president and chief executive officer. "There was never any intent to change it."

Washington explained that the company did seek to come up with a name that would allow it to create a new brand in the fields of radio, television, cable TV and the Internet. After extensive testing, mediaZing was chosen.

"Having a name that somewhat reflected the spirit of going beyond newspapers and into the marketplace today," Washington said, would be more advantageous with new investors.

"The point here is to be able to raise money," said Washington.

The SII executive said that mediaZing would market the Insiight product line -- which SII introduced at last summer's NEXPO (see The Cole Papers, July 1999) -- to media besides newspapers.

"The actual Insiight product has validity beyond the newspaper market." said Washington. He emphasized that selling into other media would benefit the company's traditional newspaper customers, as new features would be made available to all.

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

-- dmc

Bit bucket ...

"There are three things that are inevitable in life -- death, taxes and technology."
Lee Smith, publisher of more than 50 newsletters.

Gorilla-my-dreams: Correspondent Steven E. Brier called World Headquarters to ask if we use a PalmPilot. "Sure do," we said. "Well," he said, "I've found a great Pilot calendaring product and I think it's written by someone you know." Looking up the web site, it was somebody we pretty much all know: C.E. Steuart Dewar is now the proprietor of Pimlico Software Inc., makers of shareware DateBk3 calendar for the Pilot and Datebook+ for the HandSpring Visor. Dewar, the longtime owner and chief software cook at Dewar Information Systems Inc. of suburban Chicago, sold his business to Sysdeco in 1995, which eventually rolled it into Atex. The DewarView front-end system? Named after Steuart. Today, the profits of Pimlico, though, go to the Dewar Wildlife Trust Inc. of Morganton, Ga., which is funding and building Gorilla Haven, whose mission statement reads, "To help make every captive gorilla's life as enriched and natural as possible and to promote education about gorilla conservation in zoos and the wild." Dewar has purchased 275 acres in the Georgia mountains and is building a sanctuary for gorillas in need. About the software, he writes, "It's rather nice to be selling into an exploding market rather than a static, declining market, and to ride the crest of the wave." For more information on Dewar, Gorilla Haven and/or Pimlico, point your browser at http://www.gorilla-haven.org/pimlico/. ...

Short-timer: At the Toronto Star, Audrey MacLean Burke left the paper Feb. 29 after a mere 40 years and three months. MacLean Burke rose from an accounts receivable clerk in 1959 to the paper's Y2K project director over that time, with stops as a manager in classified and display, the presidency of Starguide (a 1980s videotext project), the paper's director of operations planning and control and the vice president of the paper's Real Estate News subsidiary. No word on what the slacker would do in the future. ...

Real bits: At Texas' Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Ron Ferriby has been named veep of production; he'd been pressroom manager. ... At Cox Newspapers Inc. of Atlanta, Jenny Trautman has been named director of information and technology; previously she was technical services manager. ... At Newsday of Long Island, N.Y., Ron Chiavaro has been named director of pre-press production and quality assurance; previously, he had been the manager of those functions at the paper. ...

New media mavens: At Discovery.com, Rob Covey has been named vice president and creative director; previously Covey was design director of U.S. News & World Report. Covey had been with the magazine since 1987 and in earlier lives had been art director of the Seattle Times and of the Tucscon's Arizona Daily Star. ... At the New York Times and Scholastic Inc., Ron Givens has been named to the newly created position of editorial director of the New York Times Upfront, a national bi-weekly teen news magazine; previously Givens was with the New York Daily News, where he was entertainment editor and reporter for the last seven years. ... At Times Digital Co. of New York, Craig Calder has been named vice president of marketing; previously, Calder had been senior director of marketing and programming at Nickelodeon Online. ... At Crain's Chicago Business, David Snyder has been named general manager of the paper's Internet operations; he had been editor of the paper since 1993. ...

Vendor venues: At Geac Publishing Systems of Tampa, Fla., Philip Jordan has been named product manager for the Cybergraphic editorial systems products; previously, Jordan was the editorial systems manager of the Los Angeles Times. Earlier, Jordan was with Information International Inc. (Triple-I) and Infosis Group Ltd., a British Internet company. Before becoming a wirehead, Jordan was a writing journalist and editorial executive at both The Guardian and the Mail on Sunday in London. ... At Kodak Polychrome Graphics of Norwalk, Conn., Jeffrey Jacobson has been named corporate senior vice president and president of the Americas division and will manage the Latin American Region and the Anitec Newspaper Co.; previously he had been president of the U.S. and Canadian region. Also at Kodak Polychrome, Robert Nobile has been named corporate senior vice president and chief financial officer; he had been vice president and CFO since 1998, after a 12-year career with Arthur Andersen. ... At Open Market Inc. of Burlington, Mass., Ron Matros has been named chief executive officer while retaining the title of president. Matros had been president and chief operating officer of Open Market since its merger with FutureTense in July 1999; previously he'd been chief executive officer of FutureTense. In an earlier life, Matros was with Atex for 15 years, serving in a variety of positions. Gary Eichhorn, Open Market's former chief executive officer, is retiring. ... At Prepress Solutions Inc. of East Hanover, N.J., a subsidiary of IPA/Monotype Systems, Tony Ford has been named chief operating officer; he will also be a senior vice president of Monotype. In previous lives, Ford was with HighWater Designs, Hyphen and Xenotron. ... At TC Advertising of Baltimore, Md., Larry Santillo has been named vice president of newspaper services; Santillo will continue as vice president of southwestern sales and has been with the company for 13 years. ... At Xitron Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich., Kern Kuipers has been named product manager of Raster Image Processor Workflow Products. Kuipers has been with Xitron for four years, where he most recently was technical support manager. ... At X-Rite Inc. of Grandville, Mich., Richard Cook has been named chief executive officer; he will continue as president, a position he has held since 1998. ...

Confabs: Websourcing 2000, a conference and exposition to be held in San Francisco March 16-17, is all about the new trend called "application service providers." Speakers include Deepak Gupta of PeopleSoft, Steve McDermott of Marimba and John Desmond of Software Magazine. In case you can't outsource getting to a conference, call (508) 870-5858, ext. 20 or send e-mail to imgcorp@intmedgrp.com. ... VUE/Point, the conference for business and technology in the graphic arts, will be held March 27-29 in Arlington, Va. To register by phone or receive additional information, call (800) 962-5650. ... The Illustrators Workshop, sponsored by the Society for News Design, will be held April 3-5 in Las Vegas. Speakers include Nuri Ducassi of the Miami Herald, international graphics consultant Jeff Gortzen, Sam Hundley of The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va. and Ricardo Martinez, formerly of the Miami News and Miami Herald. For more information, call SND at (401) 276-2100 or send e-mail to snd@snd.org. ... Also April 3-5, America East, the best newspaper trade show hosted in a town where they make chocolate, will be held in Hershey, Pa. For more information, call (717) 703-3069. ... #

From THE COLE PAPERS, March 2000, Copyright © 2000, All Rights Reserved.