2 Execs Promoted at AP

By: (AP) Thomas E. Slaughter and Jane R. Seagrave have been promoted to new management positions in the Newspaper & New Media Markets department of The Associated Press.

Slaughter becomes vice president of the department's Newspaper Market unit, overseeing headquarters activities related to AP's business relationships with its 1,550 newspaper members. He had served since 2003 as vice president of New Media Markets in the department, responsible for products and sales to the online operations of AP's newspaper members.

Seagrave was appointed director of New Media Markets in the department, adding responsibility for the online operations of AP-member papers to her assignment as head of AP Digital, which provides news and information to Web sites, corporate desktops, wireless devices, and other new-media applications.

The appointments were announced Monday by Tom Brettingen, senior vice president of the N&NMM department. They will take effect immediately as part of a reorganization following the decision by veteran AP executive Rick Spratling, director of the newspaper unit of N&NMM, to retire in June

Slaughter, 55, joined the AP in Topeka, Kan., in 1973 and worked in Sioux Falls, S.D., and Denver before being named correspondent in Cheyenne, Wyo., in 1976. He later served as correspondent in Tallahassee, Fla., assistant chief of bureau in Dallas and bureau chief in Newark, N.J., and in Seattle. He was named a general executive at New York headquarters in 1989 and later served as director of strategic planning and director of AP Digital before joining the N&NMM department. He was named a vice president in 1999.

A native of Salina, Kan., Slaughter holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Kansas and a master's degree in business administration from City University in Bellevue, Wash.

Seagrave, 50, rejoined the AP in 2003 as director of AP Digital from a role as chief online strategy consultant for America Lawyer Media, where she developed and managed the integration of that New York-based company with San Francisco-based law.com. She was an AP newswoman from 1979 to 1985 with assignments in Santa Fe, N.M., Grants Pass, Ore., and Boston. She later served as vice president-editorial and production for Lawyers Weekly Publications in Boston, president and chief operating officer of Legal Communications Ltd. in Philadelphia and chief executive officer of localbusiness.com of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

A New England native, she is a graduate of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and holds a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Spratling, 63, has had a 30-year career with the AP, including assignments as news editor in Salt Lake City and Boston, chief of bureau in Milwaukee and San Francisco, and general executive in New York. He was named director of the newspaper unit of N&NMM in 2003.