AGT buys Agile Enterprises

The editorial front-end system that seemed to be designed more for technical types than for editors has apparently found a home with Applied Graphics Technologies Inc. of New York.

TeamBase, developed by Agile Enterprise Inc. of Nashua, N.H., has been adopted by a limited number of newspapers, but is a big hit at Newsweek magazine. A true cross-platform product, TeamBase has brought a number of Atex-like features to the client-server world.

Unconfirmed reports in late September had AGT acquiring Agile; no specifics were available, although it was assumed that Agile would operate as a stand-alone division of AGT and that Frank Rizzo, the company's founder, would remain in charge.

AGT calls itself "one of the foremost digital pre-press companies in America." It provides a network of 30 national pre-press centers that are connected to printing plants, allowing publishers to have their pages distributed digitally in a speedy manner. Similarly, AGT does pre-press and digital distribution for advertising agencies.

It also distributes broadcast content through a similar network and offers outsourced pre-press services for a variety of organizations, including the magazine publishers Condé Nast and McGraw-Hill.

In addition, AGT sells a digital asset management product called Digital Link System, which is based on the work done with the Gateway System, a photo archiving product that was sold into the newspaper industry between 1994 and 1996 (see The Cole Papers, September 1994).

Though publicly traded, AGT is controlled by real estate magnate and publisher Mort Zuckerman, who also owns the New York Daily News and the magazines U.S. News & World Report, Atlantic Monthly and Fast Company. Zuckerman lieutenant Fred Drasner is the chief executive officer of AGT and in mid-September took over operational duties at the company, following the leave-taking of longtime COO Melvin Ettinger.

It was reported that AGT planned to use the TeamBase product as a front-end for the Digital Link System and that TeamBase would replace an aging Atex front-end at U.S. News.

At presstime, phone calls to Agile and AGT seeking confirmation had not been returned.

-- dmc

Bit bucket ...

"It's quite clear nobody really wants to sit in front of the computer to read an extended amount of material or watch a movie clip, or even look at a lot of still images. You are going to have an interface people feel much more comfortable with. Maybe it's WebTV or electronic books."
-- Hal Varian,
dean of the University of California-Berkeley's
School of Information Management and Systems,
quoted in TECHWEB, Sept. 17, 1998

The new APSU: In addition to its annual meeting (see story, Page 6), the Association of Publishing Systems Users elected officers last month in Palm Springs, Calif. Gary Ward of The State of Columbia, S.C., will be the new president, while James Beatty, technology manager at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and incumbent Cindy Smith of the Pennysaver Corp. of Yorktown Heights, N.Y., will serve as association vice presidents. Randy Jessee of The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, Va., continues as treasurer, with David Hard of Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. as secretary and Rebecca Pratt of Newsweek as membership chair. Continuing as directors are Mark Siple of the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch and Bob Edmonston of the Boston Globe, who will be joined by Pat Kneeland, enterprise project manager of the Seattle Times, and one other director to be named later. ...

Vendor variables: At American Computer Innovators Inc. of Amherst, Mass., Joe Francis has been named western regional sales manager; most recently with Freedom System Integrators Inc. of Wichita, Kan., Francis previously had a long stint with Camex and DuPont. ... At Color Savvy Systems Ltd., of Springboro, Ohio, Chris Peterson has been named president and chief executive; he joined the company in 1993 as vice president of engineering. Also at Color Savvy, Dave Bowden has been named engineering veep (he came from 22 years at X-Rite) and Mark Geeves has been named sales and marketing veep (15 years at X-Rite). ... At Freedom System Integrators, two new regional sales managers have been named -- Gary Demko for the Northeast and Glenn Peterson for the Southeast. Previously Demko was with Mission Critical and has many years of sales experience in pre-press, having worked with Atex and Autologic. Peterson came to Freedom from Harlequin and previously had been with triple-I, Autologic and MGD Rockwell International. Also at Freedom, Ro Huthwaite has been named sales support specialist; she has six years' experience as a trainer and documentation analyst in pre-press. ... At The Gale Group (a division of Thomson Business Information) of Detroit, Allen Paschal has been named CEO; previously Paschal was CEO of Thomson's Information Access Co. (which merged with Thomson's Gale Research to make The Gale Group) and before that, the longtime chief executive of DataTimes, the newspaper electronic library provider. ... At Managing Editor Inc. of Jenkintown, Pa., Peter Kelts has been named vice president of technical services; with the company since 1993, Kelts has held "various technical installation and management roles." ... At the New Horizons Team of Pottsville, Pa. (makers of the InfoConnect line of audiotext products), Gene Tye has been named president and chief executive; most recently Tye was president of Advantage Marketing Inc., a newspaper consulting company based in Connecticut, and previously was president and CEO of Classifacts, the late electronic classifieds solution supplier. Before that Tye held various executive and management positions in marketing, business development, electronic publishing and circulation with Times Mirror and Knight Ridder newspapers. ... At System Integrators Inc. of Sacramento, Peter Barker has been named regional manager in the Sydney, Australia, office; most recently, Barker was customer service manager in Europe for the company. Also at SII, Richard Smith has been named general manager for the United Kingdom, while Christian Darroy has been named general manager for France. Lastly, John Lemmey has been put in charge of U.K. sales support; he has been with SII since 1991. ... At Thomson Target Media of Chicago, Dennis Christensen has been named West Coast sales manager; most recently an independent sales rep with Better Homes and Gardens Features Syndicate, Christensen has also been with Gannett Co. Inc. ... At Tribune Media Services of Chicago, Marco Buscaglia has been named editor of the College Press Exchange; most recently a producer on the TMS web sites, Buscaglia is the former editor of the Park Ridge Times Herald, a suburban Chicago newspaper. Also at TMS, Lara Kenney has been named an account executive for TV Listings information and services; previously Kenney was a content acquisition specialist for Infonautics Corp. ... At United Press International of Washington, James Adams has resigned as chief executive officer. Adams, who held the post for less than a year, said he was going to devote his attention to Infrastructure Defense Inc., a computer-security business; he will remain on the UPI board of directors. Garry Meldrum, formerly business management director, is holding the CEO spot temporarily. ...

Confabs: The Publish Magazine conference is Oct. 7-9 in San Diego. Topics include "Defining Mixed-Platform Publishing," "Servers for Publishing and Pre-press," and "Moving Fonts and Files Between Platforms." For more information, call (978) 443-3330, ext. 1245. ... IFRA Congress-Expo '98, the not-insignificant European newspaper trade show, will be Oct. 12-15 in Lyon, France. For more information, contact IFRA at (011) {49} 6151-733-720. ... The Technology-Enabled Selling Conference, sponsored by SoftAd Group Inc. of Mill Valley, Calif., will be Oct. 15-16 in Indianapolis. Speakers will include Bill Bass of Forrester Research and David Thomson of the Daily Oklahoman of Oklahoma City. For more information, call SoftAd at (415) 332-4704. ... The International Newspaper Group's annual conference is Oct. 20-22 in Miami. Speakers include Joe Natoli of the Miami Herald, Frank Paiva of the Seattle Times, Mark Kurtich of the Los Angeles Times and Stan Pantel of Atlanta's Journal and Constitution. For more information, contact Marty Donner, 39 Mouacdie Dr., Pearl River, N.Y. 10965. ... "Tomorrow's Newsroom Today" is the theme of the 1998 Society of Professional Journalists annual national convention, to be held Oct. 22-24 in Los Angeles. Speakers include Los Angeles Times Publisher Mark Willes and McGraw-Hill Senior Vice President (and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter) Robert Montemayor, while topics include "Coaching in the Newsroom," "Staffing for Diversity" and "Managing On-line Publications: Views from the Trenches." For the scoop, call (765) 653-3333 or send e-mail to spj@spjhq.org. ... Graph Expo, the big graphic arts trade show, is Oct. 25-28 in Chicago. In addition to hundreds of exhibitors, there is a one-day "Executive Outlook" conference and 59 educational seminars. There are also special brunch sessions, whose speakers include Frank Romano of the Rochester Institute of Technology and Jack Powers of Meckler Media. For more information, call (703) 264-7200 or visit the web site at http://www.gasc.org/. ... The TAG '98 conference, which concerns the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and is sponsored by Microsoft, will be Nov. 4-6 in Washington, D.C. For more information, call (303) 766-7844. ... The International Business Process Summit is Nov. 9-12 in Oakland, Calif. Session topics include "No Fear Management." For more information, call (617) 247-1511. ... #

From THE COLE PAPERS, October 1998, Copyright © 1998, All Rights Reserved.