Chris Jennewein, vice president/technology & operations for Knight Ridder New Media in San Jose, Calif., is a true pioneer of the newspaper industry's adoption of interactivity. As far back as 1988, when the Internet was known only to scientists and academics, and modems operated at 800 baud, Jennewein was finding ways to help his newspaper serve its community and generate profit through the use of interactive media.

In the late 1980s, as director of information services with the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Jennewein managed the newspaper's development of audiotex, videotex (online), and fax services. And while the audiotex efforts attracted the biggest audiences, and generated the most revenue, the most lasting efforts were occurring in the fledgling online industry.

Jennewein launched the service that would later be known as Access Atlanta in late 1988, as part of the Bell South Videotext Gateway. And when the phone company withdrew from the videotex business, Access Atlanta continued on into the early '90s with features that are now the staples of all newspaper online services — archives, prepublication classified ads, searchable databases, chat, and bulletin boards.

In 1992, Jennewein moved to Silicon Valley to become general manager of Mercury Center, the groundbreaking online newspaper of the San Jose Mercury News. He was responsible for the content, technology, and finances of Mercury Center, which was the first newspaper to publish in full on America Online and, later, on the Internet.

His Mercury Center years were noteworthy on many fronts. Not only did Mercury Center provide a superior online experience for its customers; it also set a standard that most newspapers still have not reached for integrating the online product with the newspaper — with in-column refers to the online product appearing throughout its pages.

Under Jennewein's direction, Mercury Center developed the NewsHound agent/alert service, a type of software that has been copied and expanded by a number of Internet players during the past few years. And he had the foresight to become the first customer (in 1994) of a little-known Valley startup called Mosaic Communications, which later gained fame as Netscape Communications.

In his next assignment, as director of the Knight Ridder New Media Center, Jennewein was instrumental in helping Knight Ridder become the first large newspaper group to move all its papers online. And in his current assignment, he continues and extends his leadership role for Knight Ridder, and the industry overall. Part of that work is providing technical, editorial, and marketing direction for the Knight Ridder Real Cities Network of 40-plus Web sites. Real Cities serves geographical communities across the United States and communities of interest that span the globe. Among the newspapers in the network are the San Jose Mercury News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Kansas City Star, Charlotte Observer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and St. Paul Pioneer-Press. In terms of national reach, Real Cities is the largest network in the newspaper industry.