Big shake-ups at two big newsletter firms.

The recent outster of two veteran newsletter publishers at Simba Information and Aspen Publishers Inc. has surprised many in the newsletter industry.

Simba Information, which publishes newsletters and market reports in the media industry, has removed longtime head of the company, Megan St. John, has slashed the staff, and has moved many of the functions out of its headquarters in Stamford, Conn.

St. John has been replaced by John McManus, former associate publisher of American Demographics magazine, who takes the title of editorial director and chief operating officer at Simba.

Last January, after acquiring Kagan World Media and its more than 40 high-priced newsletters and other products and consulting services (NL/NL 1/15/01), Simba's parent company, Primedia, bundled its more than 170 newsletters, magazines, web sites, conferences, databases and other products into a new subsidiary called Media Central.

The chairman and CEO of Media Central is Steven Brill. (For an interesting look at Brill, founder of American Lawyer and Brill's Content magazine--as well as the "uncertain fate" of Inside.com--read "Inside Out" by Ken Auletta in the June 11th issue of The New Yorker.)

Simba was founded by Alan Brigish in 1989 and was later sold to Cowles Media.

McManus told NL/NL that what has occurred here is not a sharp cutback in staff. If anything the move of Simba's marketing into Media Central's marketing and customer relationship area in New York City brings more people, more resources and more clout to the promotion and sales support behind Simba's newsletter and data book products than we've ever had."

McManus also said that "what's happening here at Simba is an all-out focus on bringing greater editorial value to all the Simba newsletters and data book products."

Aspen Publishers

Ed Latta, the president and CEO of Aspen Publishers, who was operating out of Gaithersburg Maryland, has been replaced by Jane Butler, while Richard H. Kravitz takes the title of executive vice president. Both are 12-year executives at Aspen and came from Panel Publishers when it was taken over by Aspen.

They will operate out of New York City.

Aspen, a division of Wolters Kluwer, publishes more than 400 journals, newsletters, electronic products, and looseleaf reference manuals and has more than 1,000 books in print. It recently acquired Loislaw and Emmanuel Publishing and took over most of the newsletters that were run by Harcourt Professional Publications.

Butler said that the health care and public administration parts of Aspen will remain in Maryland and she indicated that "the business is running very well and growing at a very rapid pace."