writenews.com
|
Friday, March 30, 2001
Publishing Industry Soundbytes
The New York Times Announces Personal Ads: Beginning
Sunday, April 22, people can use
to The New York Times to find the right person. The New
York Times will offer
personal advertisements as a service for readers in the New
York tri-state region. Readers looking to connect with other
readers may place advertisements in Times Personals, appearing each
Sunday in The City section, Long Island Weekly, Connecticut Weekly,
Westchester Weekly and New Jersey Weekly.
CMP Media Inc. announced the launch of the Spanish edition
of M-Business,
a business publication exclusively covering the mobile economy.
Through a licensing agreement with MC Ediciones, a Spanish
media company, M-Business will be published monthly. Its initial 10,000 circulation
will reach Spanish CEOs, CTOs, VPs, directors, systems
integrators, analysts and consultants.
iPipe, Inc. announced a content distribution agreement with
Yahoo! Inc., an Internet communications and media company, to
provide comic strips, editorial cartoons, and opinion columns
to Yahoo! News.
Under the agreement, iPipe is providing Yahoo! News with 50
well-known syndicated properties. Notable comic features include
B.C. by Johnny Hart, Wizard of Id by Brant Parker and
Johnny Hart and Cobwebs by Bob Gorrell and Gary Brookins,
along with five others. The list of 22 editorial cartoonists
includes Pulitzer Prize winners Steve Breen, Michael Ramirez,
Mike Peters and Mike Luckovich. Opinion columnists include
Pulitzer Prize winners David Broder, Ellen Goodman and George
Will along with other notable names such as Linda Chavez, Oliver
North and columnist Ann Landers. The features are located in
the Comics and Op/Ed sections that can be accessed via the front
page of Yahoo! News.
Network World, Inc., announced that it has launched a
learning and training portal for information
technology professionals, at
nwnetsmart.com. nwnetsmart.com
provides access certification and training programs, seminars,
and online ``boot camps'' for technologies such as security, optical
networking, LAN, WAN, storage, wireless, and Web infrastructure.
La Opinion, a Spanish daily newspaper, began syndication
of its proprietary news articles and photographs.
La Opinion will produce weekly, topic-specific packages
for both domestic and international subscribers. These include
an entertainment package, a sports package and a business and
technology package. Daily feeds of news highlights and images
relevant to other U.S. markets and abroad will also be available.
Other market-specific opportunities include features, such as
ad hoc, ``one shot'' interviews with high profile figureheads
or personalities, including single a-la-carte photographs, as
well as regional packages for Central America or Mexico.
Founded on Sept. 16, 1926, in Los Angeles, La Opinion is
the nation's largest Spanish-language daily newspaper. It
circulates throughout the five-county Southern California area
and reaches more than 600,000 readers daily. La Opinion is
co-owned by Lozano Enterprises and Tribune Co. The Lozano
family has published the newspaper since its founding.
Internet World
magazine announced that it has boosted its controlled
circulation an additional 13 percent from 200,000 to 225,000
readers, effective with the January 15, 2001 issue.
With the latest increase, Internet World's circulation
has grown 80 percent
since July 1999 when it's circulation was 125,000. The 225,000
audience is being submitted for the June 2001 BPA Audit.
Modern Times Group Mobile services company, Everymobile,
has launched the mobile portal Everymobile.com in Sweden.
Initially, the portal will contain services ranging from ringing tones and
logos for mobile phones to entertainment and dating services.
Universal Studios Recreation Group, a provider of
destination theme parks and Nickelodeon, an entertainment brand
for kids, have signed a new strategic alliance focusing on
the development of new Nickelodeon-branded attractions at
Universal's theme parks across the country.
Under the agreement, Universal and Nickelodeon will develop two
major attractions, create co-branded promotions, sell merchandise
and increase marketing and advertising on the
cable network. The agreement will grant Universal Studios rights
to use Nickelodeon's characters and intellectual properties in
its American theme parks based on some of the network's
children's shows including The Rugrats, The Wild Thornberrys,
SpongeBob SquarePants, Blue's Clues and Rocket Power.
Nickelodeon will also maintain the option to utilize the production
facilities at Universal Orlando.
Publishing Group of America (PGA), publisher of American
Profile, a national weekly community newspaper magazine with
3 million circulation, has completed a $23 million round of
financing. Quadrangle Capital Partners LP, a private equity fund
focused on the media and communications industries, led the
financing. PGA launched American Profile in two regions of
the United States in April 2000 and has coast-to-coast distribution
through five regional editions. American Profile has national
and regional editorial celebrating the good news of life in
America's hometowns and is one of the 20 largest publications
in the country. The four-color magazine is distributed through
more than 600 small- to medium-sized community newspapers.
Mark Brohan, an editor and reporter, is the new Web publisher
and editorial director at DM Review Interactive, EC
Media Group President Michael Warner announced.
Brohan, a long-time EC Media Group editor who most recently
served as the group's director of new print product business
development in Chicago, assumes his new responsibilities immediately.
Baby Corner, an
online magazine and community has re-launched
its' website. The two-year old website now has new features such as
personalized pregnancy and baby newsletters, tools for
users to keep track of their pregnancy and/or baby's milestones,
and a new look aimed to improve load time and user
friendliness.
Baby Corner also announced the addition of Jerri Colonero,
BS, RN, Author of With You and Your Baby All The Way, to
their panel of experts. Colonero will be available to answer
questions related to pregnancy and newborn babies from visitors
to the Baby Corner website.
Baby Corner, located in Vestal, NY, was founded by Elizabeth
and Scott Geiger in December of 1998.
Tina Brown, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Talk Media
announced that Lisa DePaulo and Pamela Gross have joined
Talk Magazine.
Ms. DePaulo will be a contributing writer and Ms. Gross will be
the magazine's first Society editor.
Lisa DePaulo has written for George, Marie Claire, Vanity Fair,
US, New York, Vogue and the New York Times Magazine.
Pamela Gross was recently Creative Director and Editor-in-Chief
of LuxuryFinder.com, which was launched in October 1998 as
an ecommerce and content website focused on luxury goods.
The Motley Fool, a multimedia personal finance company,
made two management announcements -- the
appointment of former GE Capital executive Scott Schedler as
its new Chief Financial Officer and the appointment of Gary Hill
as the Senior Vice President of Organizational and Corporate
Development. Last May, the company named Pat Garner, a 30-year
veteran of The Coca-Cola Company, as its first Chief Executive
Officer.
TheThreshold.com,
a subsidiary of multimedia and intellectual
property management company Threshold Entertainment, announced its
acquisition of the exclusive on-line rights to the American
Speed Association (ASA). ASA is a national-touring stock car
racing series in its 34th year, nationally televised live on TNN.
The series will become part of the sports/cars section on
TheThreshold.com. The official ASA site will also be available
directly through www.asaracing.com.
At the 2001 Tokyo Game Show, Microsoft Corp. and video game
developer Sega Corp. announced a long-term, strategic alliance
to bring future versions of Sega's great games to Microsoft's new
Xbox video game system. The companies kicked off their relationship
by announcing an 11-title publishing alliance to premiere many
of Sega's upcoming games on the Microsoft Xbox console. The
first games to premiere on Xbox will be Jet Grind Radio
Future (tentative title), Panzer Dragoon (latest
version), Gunvalkyrie and Sega GT (latest version).
In addition, Sega plans to utilize the Xbox video game system's
broadband online gaming capabilities.
AirMedia, an
Internet-based wireless communications company, announced that
it has closed $13.5 million round of financing from two of the
company's previous investors -- Citigroup Investments, a
division of Citigroup Inc., and Verus International, a privately
owned global merchant bank focused on the migration and
globalization of leading edge technologies.
The company plans to use this capital infusion to expand its
European operations and to market its soon-to-be-launched
European Wireless Hub, a service that brings together content
providers and distributors in a business-to-business online marketplace.
Versaware Inc., a provider of electronic publishing services,
announced that The American Diabetes Association (ADA) has
selected them as their electronic publisher. This month, the
American Diabetes Association launches a co-branded
ebookstore,
available from the ADA's diabetes website. The site will make
available for sale ADA titles in electronic format to both
members and non-members, including patients and their families
as well as health care professionals. Versaware is creating the
ebook versions of these titles and building the co-branded
electronic bookstore for this initiative.
Flipside, Inc., a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal Publishing,
itself a division of Vivendi Universal,
announced the completion of its acquisition of Uproar Inc.
Eprise Corporation, a provider of content management solutions,
and Inxight Software, Inc., a provider of unstructured data
management software, announced a partnershipt. This joint agreement
enables Eprise and Inxight to market and cross-sell Inxight
products with Eprise Participant Server.
1st Miracle Group, Inc., a film and
production company, announced through its joint-venture with
Cutting Edge Entertainment, the film The Devil & Daniel Webster
has completed the Principal Photography phase and entered into
the Post Production phase.
The film, staring Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Love
Hewitt, Dan Aykroyd and Kim Cattrall is based on the 1937 short
story by Stephen Vincent Benet and is a remake of a 1941 film
directed by William Dieterle. This will mark Alec Baldwin's
directorial debut.
Baldwin directs and stars in this modern retelling as a discouraged
writer who sells his soul to the devil in return for ten years
of fame and fortune. When the bargain does not yield him happiness,
he seeks the help of Webster (Hopkins), the head of a powerful
publishing company, to assist in reversing the deal.
The Principal Photography phase entailed the actual shooting of
the physical film. The shooting of the film took place over the
last few months and is now completed. The Post Production phase
entails the editing and packaging of the film, which is currently
occurring.
Cutting Edge Entertainment will remain as the project's foreign
sales agent of this $28 million film, and The William Morris
Agency and Creative Artists Agency will represent the domestic
rights.
Rick Krim has been named to the position of Executive Vice
President, Talent & Music Programming,
VH1, it was announced by John
Sykes, President of VH1 and CMT.
As head of the Talent & Music Programming Department, Krim will
be responsible for all talent, artist and label relations
activities, serving as the chief liaison between VH1, the artists
and the recording industry. In addition, he will oversee all
programming of music on the channel, including the development
of new music video shows. Krim's appointment marks his return to
MTV Networks, where he had been Vice President, Talent and Artists
Relations, MTV.
Follett Higher Education Group, a higher education
bookstore operator, has selected Microsoft Reader as the inaugural
format for efollett.com's
ebookstore. From within the efollett.com ebookstore, students will
be able to download a free version of the Microsoft Reader
enabling them to purchase and download ebook titles. Follett is
working with OverDrive, Inc. to distribute content using Microsoft
Digital Asset Server (DAS).
Follett Higher Education Group is a contractor of
campus bookstore services and a supplier of textbooks
and other course materials in North America. Follett serves
more than four million students and over 300,000 faculty
through more than 655 stores.
Lexis-Nexis has introduced CorporateAffiliations.com,
an online, corporate linkage database
for business and research professionals.
CorporateAffiliations.com provides access to The
Directory of Corporate Affiliations (DCA). DCA,
which has been published for over 30 years, is a business
information resource that provides insight into more
than 137,000 parent companies, affiliates, subsidiaries and
divisions worldwide.
ChatSpace, Inc., a provider of
online community technology announced that it will acquire the
WebBoard line of products from O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
Click here to
return to the homepage of The Write NewsTM
Click here to
subscribe to our free weekly email newsletter.
www.writenews.com
Copyright © 1997-2011 by Writers Write, Inc. All Rights
Reserved.
|
