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Survivors (golf and otherwise): Back row from left -- Max Coebergh, Steve Rosenfeld, Ron Stephens, Ted Bearor, Pete Lewis and Ron Charron. Front row from left -- Dave Brown, Steve Dienna, Joe Bailey, Al DePalma, John Ballard and Dale Zwizinski. |
Ten years of golf transcends
competition, job changes
Showing that friendship can transcend competition between systems suppliers -- and that there are some crazy folks in the newspaper systems business -- here's the story of the Golf 'Til You Drop group.
Golf 'Til You Drop started 10 years ago when Roger Grammer (ex-Atex, ex-News International), Bill Hack (ex-Atex, ex-boston Globe, now at the Arizona Republic), Nancy Faunce (currently head of major systems development at Atex Media Command or AMC) and I (a 23-year veteran of AMC), got together in Sacramento for a few days of golf. Four days of dawn-to-dark golf in 1994 at Rancho Murietta launched Golf 'Til You Drop. The 10th annual event was last March in Las Vegas.
Over the 10 years, 17 different golfers, all with ties to suppliers or newspapers, have played more than 750 rounds (13,500-plus holes) on 55 courses in five states.
In recent years the spring event has been 12 guys playing 10 rounds in five days. Golf 'Til You Drop has hit many locations including Palm Springs, Scottsdale, Ariz., Pinehurst, N.C., San Diego, and Hilton Head, S.C.
For the last two years the line-up has included Joe Bailey (formerly with the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group), John Ballard (Atex Media Command), Ted Bearor (Atex Media Command), Dave Brown (formerly with the New York Times), Ron Charron (also ex-Nytrng), Max Coebergh (former Atex chief executive), Alphonse DePalma (Atex Media Command), Steve Dienna (ex-Atex, ex-SII, now Unisys), Steve Rosenfeld (ex-Atex, now Edgil), Ron Stephens (ex-Atex, ex-SII, ex-Unisys, now net-linx), Dale Zwizinski (ex-Atex, now 5fifteen) and myself. That group has more than 200 years as newspaper system suppliers and buyers.
Each year there is a five-round tournament with a prize pool and lots of side bets and a bunch of practice rounds. This year the hard-core players played 15 rounds across eight days.
We're talking serious fatigue and blisters.
"Our wives think we're nuts but it's great fun to get together" said DePalma. "The tournament is serious but the stories and laughs in between are probably the best part."
Dienna added that "the lure of Las Vegas went largely ignored.
"We were in the van before 7 a.m. everyday, 36 holes, shower, cocktails, group dinner, pop some Advil and crash because you had to get up and do it all over again the next day," Dienna said.
In this year's tournament action, Bailey and Brown won the team title and Dienna was the individual low scorer.
-- Pete Lewis, plewis@colepapers.net
Bit bucket ...
"We are impressed with the advancements Apple is making with its operating system and we are preparing to develop our products for it. ... We will continue to work closely with them so we can simultaneously introduce Quark applications that are native to Mac OS X as well as Windows-based operating systems."
-- Quark desktop division director, Richard Jones, September 1998, quote on the AltiMac web site. Quark finally introduced an OS X version of XPress last month.
Production professionals: At Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. of Birmingham, Ala., Tom Shafer has been named production director; previously he had been chief executive of the newspaper consulting firm OpsFusion as well as the chief executive of the newspaper press training facility Cmyk University. In a 32-year newspaper career Shafer has done it all: from jogging magazines straight off a press and pressman to reporter, editor and publisher. Earlier Shafer had been director of production technologies for Thomson Newspapers, the vice president of production at Ohio's Dayton Daily News, the publisher of The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., and one of the founding production executives of USA Today. ... At Morris Communications of Augusta, Ga., Russell Leseberg has been named director of publishing technology; for the last nine years Leseberg has run his own newspaper technology consultancy, Avail Technologies. Earlier in his career, Leseberg was technical services manager at Digital Technology International and has worked in a variety of newspaper publishing capacities, most especially in the pressroom. Avail will continue to operate and will continue to market its BluMunKee ImageLighting software (see The Cole Papers, June 2003). ... At the Santa Fe New Mexican, Jeff Norris has been named information technology and production director; previously Norris was the creative services director of the Morning News in Springdale, Ark. Earlier in his career, Norris was the production director of the Rockdale Citizen in Conyers, Ga. ... At the Seattle Times, Charles Fertig has been named publishing systems director; previously he was with the University of Kansas, but earlier in his career was the publishing systems manager at the Baltimore Sun and for 17 years ran technology and publishing systems at the News-Press & Gazette in St. Joseph, Mo. ...
New media mavens: At the Sacramento Bee, Ed Canale has been named vice president of new media and strategic planning; previously he had been director of new media and strategic planning. Before new media, the 23-year Bee veteran had been the paper's marketing director and earlier had been its assistant managing editor for graphics and features. ... At Florida's St. Petersburg Times, Christine Montgomery has been named director of electronic publishing; previously she had been deputy managing editor of USAToday.com and had earlier worked as an editor in the Life section of USA Today. ... At Gannett Wisconsin papers (Appleton's Post-Crescent, et al), Ruth Niermeyer has been named on-line director; previously she had been with Advance Internet's MassLive.com and has a sales background at newspapers in New Jersey, South Carolina and Maryland. ...
Vendor vitality: At Brainworks Software Inc. of Sayville, N.Y., Dick Kitzmiller has been named a business development manager; previously Kitzmiller had been with Managing Editor Inc. and was a 20-year veteran of Collier-Jackson (and its succeeding companies). Earlier in his career, Kitzmiller was a circulation executive at the Herald-Mail of Hagerstown, Md., and the Washington Times. Also at Brainworks, Paul Lampasona has been named a business development manager; previously Lampasona was a sales executive with the Suffolk Life group of weekly newspapers in nearby Riverhead, N.Y. ... At Integrated Color Solutions Inc. of New York City, Kevin Burke has been named West Coast sales director; previously Burke was with Global Graphics Software and had earlier worked for Imation Enterprises and Imaging Technologies Corp. ... At Managing Editor Inc., of Jenkintown, Pa., Dana Bascom returns to the fold as Northeast and Great Lakes sales manager. A six-year MEI veteran, Bascom most recently was a sales executive with Brainworks and had earlier been selling on-line interactive products. Bascom was with MEI from 1994-2000 and before that had been a sales executive with System Integrators and was a 15-year veteran of Composition Systems Inc. ... At Tacoda Systems of New York City, Paola Vecchiolla has been named strategic accounts manager; previously she was a sales executive with Groove Networks and had earlier been with New Era of Networks, Sybase and Must Software Inc. ...
Errors & Omissions: In the April 2003 edition of The Cole Papers, in an article called "Connecting with the people shorter and younger than you," reference was made to "the late departed Art Linkletter. ..." As Reader Thom McLean of the Ventura County Star put it, "That is going to come as an awful shock to Mr. Linkletter, who is still among the living at 90 years of age." We apologize for the error. ... #
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