Robert A. Rosenthal

Selected Accomplishments

• In 2009 Dow Jones embarked on Project Gemini, an ambitious undertaking with the goal of replacing the publishing systems of both The Wall Street Journal and WSJ.com with a unified media-independent content management system. While the excitement surrounding such a system is its ability to easily publish digital content on the web, the iPad/iPhone, the Kindle and Android mobiles, it still has the requirement to produce classic typography and good-looking pages on newsprint. For this requirement, Dow Jones once again turned to RAR who for the sixth time over a thirty-year association, implemented the entire WSJ. This project was a big success, and shortly thereafter RAR was asked to build Barrons and even sister News Corp. publication The New York Post. All of these publications are now produced regulalry using styles, formats and page templates built by RAR.
  
  
• RAR has a long history with Dow Jones' newspapers, The Wall Street Journal and Barrons. Over the years DJ has come to rely on RAR as their expert on matters typographical, for building all of their publications' formats and templates, and as a trouble-shooter for diagnosing production problems. For the January, 2007 debut of WSJ 3.0, a new design on a narrower page, RAR again built every news and opinion page in the paper. In 2002 RAR headed up the implementation of the makeover of The Wall Street Journal, which added much color to the formerly staid pages of the Journal. (Click here for technical details.) Previously, he converted The Journal and Barron's from CSI to Unisys as part of Dow Jones' successful move to full digital pagination. The completion of this project enabled Dow Jones to finally retire its CSI system.
  
  

  

  Above: The Wall Street Journal section fronts after 2002 redesign

• For an educational publishing company faced with the problem of independent, inconsistent, overlapping data bases, RAR conceived and designed a data warehouse that synchronizes data between them, and enforces business rules of data ownership. This system was successfully deployed in August, 2000.
  
  
• Extensive work on behalf of a large book publisher that has led to several information systems used for Sales Automation, Publishing Project Planning, Book Inventory Analysis, Reprint Quantity Projection, Project Tracking, Document Management, and Cost Tracking. (more...)
  
  
• Designer of a newspaper text composition system on the Windows 98/95 platform. Besides seamlessly linking Microsoft Word and Quark Xpress, the solution supports structured markup for media independent reuse of formatted text. (more...)
  
  
• Developed the data base schema and wrote many complex SQL queries for an Accounts Receivable Data Mart and Financial Analysis application used by a large publishing organization.
  
  
• Performed systems analysis, developed specifications, wrote context sensitive help support and performed the quality testing for a system that maintains inventories of intellectual property rights. Originally developed for a publishing company, this system was subsequently applied as well to motion pictures.
  
  
• Designer of the gateway software by which a modern newspaper system exchanges data with legacy systems, production systems and down-stream content consumers. (more...)
  
  
• Principal publishing industry consultant to a major systems integration company in its successful sales effort to supply an international newspaper publisher with a global news management system based on open systems technology.
  
  
• Data base architect, senior application designer and (C, SQL, Sybase) coder for a book publishing system that enables multiple applications to share a single integrated data base.
  
  
• Completed a study of the benefits, costs, and work flow implications of adopting desktop technology to the production of schoolbooks. This study was used in the justification for a successful multi-million dollar investment by a large book publisher.
  
  
• Senior Engineering Officer for $40 million division of a company that produced electronic publishing systems. Responsibility for a budget of $8 million and a staff of 120 employees.
  
  
• Project Manager and Lead Designer of a graphically interactive news pagination system that was labeled the "most impressive system product" of the year by the Seybold Report on Publishing Systems. (more...)
  
  
• Principal Designer of the CSI newspaper front-end system, which ran for twenty five years and produced The Portland Oregonian, The Newark Star Ledger, The Johannesburg Star, The Wall Street Journal, The Dagens Nyheter of Sweden and over one hundred other papers. This system supported over 200 users on multiple DEC minicomputers, provided a fully redundant central data base and a fault tolerant environment. (more...)
  
  
• Designed and implemented resolution independent font caching software for the raster image processor within a laser printer.
  
  
• Delivered successful sales presentations to large media companies. Strong written and oral communications skills, describing complex systems to both technical and non-technical personnel.
  
  
• A solid reputation for leadership, thoroughness and integrity with a track record of managing, designing and programming technically and commercially successful computer system products.