Tony Lee

We got in touch with Tony as soon as we heard the news. Lee has been our patron for the vast majority of our time in business. A voice of reason, an industry shaper and the sort of gentle visionary who really changes the world, Tony has made the employment industry interesting. He leveraged every bit of his resource base to make the industry as a whole a better place. If we were to hold a testimonial dinner, nearly everyone in the business would be there.

Tony is moving away from operations at the Journal's Online operations and into the push and pull of vendor politics. He'll be working the opposite side of the beat like a Colonel who joins a defense contractor. The shift in focus and scope will be fascinating to watch. Tony is a player and we're sure he'll be successful.

The announcement portends a shift for our industry.

Losing "the" godfather with no observable replacement is no small thing. Tony's hand is all over a range of things from Peter Weddle's prominence to CareerXRoads success to the recent emergence of OnRec as a global news source. As the manager of a suite of Wall Street Journal brands, he was able to lend credibility and influence to a wide range of projects and personalities. interbiznet's survival was guaranteed more than once by a contract from Lee's operation.

The position, per se, won't need a replacement. The Wall Street Journal is (we hear on the streets) consolidating things into one brand. It's that famous "get a new CEO and the pendulum swings" stuff. The new CEO, Richard Zanino, represents a real break with Dow Jones tradition. His first moves involve corralling the various sub brand outbreaks into one giant traffic machine. While Dow Jones has the most successful subscription site, they could use the additional traffic to boost numbers and targeting. We're betting that the end of the CareerJournal brand is in sight.

That's not to say that the online Wall Street Journal won't continue to sell and deliver job ads. The largest player in its niche, the Journal is the 900 pound gorilla in the executive recruitment space. We just expect that the branding will change and that the focus will shift to larger revenue advertising campaigns.

This is good news for Marc Cendella of the Ladders. Any shift in focus by the journal will send customers his way. Without a guiding hand like Tony Lee's, the various content distribution and acquisition deals will begin to drift. The credibility built by Lee's hard work will start to disintegrate. That's the basic idea of brand consolidation. In the process, our industry loses a valuable center.

Any change like this creates enormous opportunity. It's no surprise that Adicio looks like the initial winner. Recent growth coupled with Lee's network make an awesome combination. The game will be a little dicier with the Adicio branding. Dow Jones is a door opener. Adicio is a naming decison that ranks with Recruitmax's choice to change its name to Vurv (turn down your speakers).

With the middle rankings in the top 10 job boards up for grabs and the shift of a key player from one side to another, the industry's politics just got a little more interesting.

Good luck, Tony.

ADICIO APPOINTS TONY LEE TO SENIOR-LEVEL POSITIONS
Industry Veteran To Focus on Developing Alliances To Benefit Adicio Clients

Adicio, the Internet's leading developer of Web-based classified-advertising solutions, today announced the appointment of Tony Lee to the newly created positions of chief alliance officer and executive vice president of East Coast Operations. Adicio—formerly CareerCast—develops interactive classified-advertising software solutions for the careers, real-estate and motors markets, and powers more than 200 client Web sites from the Internet's leading media companies and trade associations.

Mr. Lee joins Adicio from Dow Jones & Company, where he was publisher of The Wall Street Journal Online Vertical Network, which included CareerJournal.com, RealEstateJournal.com and OpinionJournal.com. Mr. Lee's duties at Dow Jones also included the development of several hundred partner relationships with a wide range of media, software and Internet companies.

 "Tony Lee is a seasoned and very successful veteran in the industry, and we are excited about him joining our management team to help drive Adicio's success," said Rick Miller, chief executive officer, Adicio. "When we created a separate organization for our networks, we needed a real visionary to take the helm. Tony brings vast experience to our network operations with his long experience in running vertical sites for Dow Jones & Company and The Wall Street Journal. Our clients in major media will benefit as we find new ways to help them work together to attract clients, build revenue and increase their visitor traffic."

Mr. Lee's responsibilities will include oversight of Adicio's Network Operations that includes the CareerCast National Network and the CareerCast Job Cross-Posting Network, which offer recruiting professionals the ability to post job opportunities into both the local database of each participating affiliate career site, as well as into the CareerCast National Network database. Participating sites in both the National Network and the Cross-Posting Network in major markets include The New York Times, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Milwaukee Journal, the Seattle Times, the Orange County Register, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Daily Oklahoman, the Columbus Dispatch and The Wall Street Journal,.

The Networks also include more than a 100 mid- to small-market daily newspaper and broadcast media career sites in 30 states, including such media companies as American Lawyer Media, Calkins Newspapers, E.W. Scripps Co., Freedom Communications, Landmark Communications, Lee Enterprises, The McClatchy Co., Media General, New York Times Regional Newspapers, Ottaway Newspapers, Stephens Media Group and Dow Jones & Company,.

Mr. Lee, who will be based in New Jersey, also will be responsible for identifying and establishing relationships with providers of services, tools, advertising and content that can be leveraged to help Adicio clients enhance their product offerings and boost revenue generation.

"I've been a big fan and supporter of Rick Miller and the Adicio team's industry-leading technology for many years," said Mr. Lee, who has served as chairman of the Adicio board of directors for the past three years, helping to oversee Dow Jones' minority investment in the firm. "CareerJournal.com was Adicio's first client, and to watch as the company has evolved so intelligently and successfully has been very exciting. I'm extremely pleased that I can now help contribute even more directly to Adicio's success by working closely with the company's management team and its clients to further develop and enhance its online recruitment, real-estate and automotive businesses."

Mr. Lee is a board member of the Newspaper Association of America's New Media Federation, as well as the Association of Career Professionals. He is formerly editor in chief of the National Business Employment Weekly and of Managing Your Career, both published by Dow Jones & Company, and is co-author of "The Jobs Rated Almanac" (2002, Barricade) and "Career Choice, Change and Challenge" (2000, JIST Pub.).

Mr. Lee appears often as a career-guidance authority on television and radio programs produced by NBC, FOX, CNBC, ABC, CNN, WCBS and The Wall Street Journal, and is a frequent conference speaker in the U.S. and internationally. He has written numerous articles for The Wall Street Journal, including the "Managing Your Career" column, and his articles have appeared in hundreds of U.S. newspapers and magazines.

Mr. Lee earned a master's degree in journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and a bachelor's degree in global issues and communications at Regis University in Denver. He and his wife and two daughters live in Mercer County, N.J.-