Directors roster.

• Author: Porter, Martin
• Position: Newly appointed corporate directors

In affiliation with Spencer Stuart - a quarterly record of new director appointments

Roger H. Mudd was a journeyman reporter 45 years ago at a newspaper operated by Richmond News Inc., which then owned two local newspapers and a radio station. He later attained celebrity status as an NBC and CBS news correspondent, and was in the running to succeed news anchor Walter Cronkite, who retired from CBS in 1981. Now semiretired, Mudd returns to where he began his career, joining his first corporate board at what is now Media General Inc. It has grown from its modest operation during Mudd's early career days to a $930 million diversified media company with interests in broadcast and cable television and information services.

Bearing witness to this new age of information technology, J. Stewart Bryan III, Media General's chairman and CEO says, "We are today living through a communications revolution." The convergence of information and communications technologies is becoming ubiquitous throughout American industry. Will this prompt companies to recruit media insiders who may have a more hands-on familiarity with the communications industry and the opportunities in the digital era? Media General and several other companies in this edition's roster have done just that.

Countrywide Credit Industries Inc. and Paging Network Inc. recruited to their boards Jeffrey Cunningham, who since 1997 had been group publisher of Forbes Inc., and publisher of Forbes magazine from 1993-1997. He also recently joined the board of PointCast Inc., an Internet media company that has been exploring going public. Shortly after his interview with DIRECTORS & BOARDS, he left Forbes with ambitions to acquire an Internet media company.

Surprisingly, he believes boards should be judicious in recruting media insiders. But, he admits, what he brings to each board is what he's learned from running Forbes' businesses: knowledge of the media and its markets, public relations skills, and how the media reacts to information. He also boasts an understanding of how the Internet may impact American industry.

Storage Technology Corp., an information storage and computer network company now has...