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CHICAGO The Newspaper Business Development Network (NBDN) will announce formally Thursday that it is dissolving, with its functions -- spreading revenue-raising ideas for special sections and niche products -- being taken over by the Inland Press Foundation.

NBDN, launched in 1988 as the Newspaper Special Sections Network, foundered as the industry economic decline shrank membership and attendance at its events. Membership had fallen to "levels making it impossible to finance independent operations," NBDN President Mike Rossetti, an editor at the Press-Register in Mobile, Ala., said in a statement.

Since 1994, NBDN had operated as an independent association, but was administered under a contract with the Inland Press Association. Inland and NBDN co-sponsored an annual conference on special section and revenue development plus a contest for the products.

NBDN will ask the Inland foundation, which will take over the NBDN's remaining funds, to continue the conference, contest and new business idea DVD in the future.

The network was founded by Alton Helm, then of The Washington Post, and Marie Anne Colucci, then of The Gazette in Montreal, Quebec. When it transferred administrative operations to Inland in 1994, the group had 38 members. It grew to 143 members by 2001, but fell to 107 by last year, and currently counts just 26 members.

Outgoing Inland Press Association Executive Director Ray Carlsen also served that function for NBDN. The final board included Chairman Amanda Boyaci of The Tulsa (Okla.) World; Barb Livingstone of the Calgary (Alberta) Herald; Karen Mauermann of the Conroe (Texas) Courier; Debra Weiss of Metro Creative Graphics; Joe DeSalvo of The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville; Chris Baker of the Taos (N.M.) News; and Dan Sprung of the Daily Sun in The Villages, Fla.

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