New Media Meltdown At New Century

It was created with a name most of its owners disliked, with a logo one partner "hated," in a city everybody rejected, with a mission nobody understood. So it was fitting that when New Century Network was kicked off last April by nine media giants teaming up to conquer electronic competition, even the launch party bombed.

In a ballroom at the Newspaper Association of America convention in Chicago, a thousand bottles of champagne emblazoned with "New Century Network: The Collective Intelligence of America's Newspapers" awaited the hordes expected to come to toast the watershed new-media joint venture. When fewer than 100 people showed up, Chief Executive Lee de Boer made an abbreviated speech before retreating. "They built a business and nobody came," says David Morgan, president of the online ad agency Real Media Inc.