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Talks that began at Nexpo '93 between neighboring exhibitors Harris Publishing Systems Corp. and Baseview Products Inc. have led to a marriage of convenience, with both parties Insisting that business will be best if they maintain separate identities and operations.
The Harris Corp. subsidiary in Melbourne, Fla., acquired Baseview, a Macintosh-based publishing systems developer, late last month. No details of the transaction were disclosed.
Both companies emphasized that Baseview will retain its name; remain at its Ann Arbor, Mich., headquarters; and continue product sales through its existing domestic and international sales and distribution channels.
Harris sells its editorial, advertising, imaging and pagination Systems to medium-sized to large dailies; Baseview targets small to medium-sized dailies and weeklies.
Baseview marketing director Robert Yoder said the companies will work together to provide Macintosh links for smaller publications now using Harris systems.
His counterpart at Harris, Ron Jones, said that although Baseview will operate independently, Harris will "help them our where we can with such skills as integration...especially as they start to serve some of the bigger newspapers as they move up market."
Yoder identified that market as newspapers with about 100,000 circulation, which he called "a lot different from our core 25,000-circulation market," which Baseview will continue to serve on its own.
A recent example of up-market installations that will draw on Harris experience is Baseview's work at the 75,000-circulation Oakland Press, Pontiac, Mich. Covering most of Oakland County, just north of Detroit, the Press is the largest of several Baseview customers among Capital Cities/ABC Inc. newspapers.
Its 85 staffers last month switched from an aging mainframe-based system to Baseview's IQue editorial system and IQueX XTension to QuarkXPress for pagination. Baseview adapted its wire capture for handling multiple wires and customized a Sonar Inc. archiving system for the newspaper's use.
Harris vice president and general manager Stan Padgett said the acquisition "greatly expands" his company's range of newspaper...