PERSONS.

Changes at the top: At Knight Ridder of San Jose, Steve Rossi has been named chief financial officer and senior vice president; previously he was president of the newspaper division. Rossi is the former general manager of KRI's Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., and served as senior vice president

for operations from 1998 to 2001. Taking Rossi's role will be Arthur Brisbane and Hilary Schneider, both of whom have been named senior vice presidents of the company. Previously, Brisbane was the publisher of KRI's Kansas City Star, a job he's held since 1997. Brisbane started in the newspaper business as a reporter at the late Kansas City Times and later worked as a reporter and editor at the Washington Post. He returned to Kansas City in 1990 and was named editor of the paper in 1992. Schneider previously had been president and chief executive of Knight Ridder Digital. A seven-year veteran of the Baltimore Sun, where she was general manager, she was also president of Times-Mirror Interactive. Before joining Knight Ridder in 2002, Schneider was chief executive of Red Herring Communications of San Francisco. Also at KRI, Gary Effren has been named vice president of finance; previously he was senior vice president and CFO. A 20-year KRI veteran, Effren had been CFO since 2001 and earlier had served as vice president and controller. ...

News at Newsday: At Long Island's Newsday, John Mancini has been named executive vice president and editor; previously he had been assistant managing editor for New York City. A 24-year veteran newsman, Mancini started his career as a news aide at Newsday, returning to the paper twice, with sojourns at the Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate in Connecticut, the New York Times, the New York Post and the Village Voice sprinkled in between. Mancini replaces Howard Schneider, who resigned. Schneider, a veteran of 35 years at Newsday, had been editor for 16 months. Also at Newsday, Paul Barbetta has been named vice president of circulation; previously he was circulation services director of the Baltimore Sun (both are Tribune papers). Earlier he had been the paper's customer satisfaction director and before that was national customer service director at USA Today. ...

Executive suite: At Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. of Birmingham, Ala., Bill Blevins has been named vice president of Internet operations; most recently he was Internet manager for the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., a job he'd held since 1999. Earlier, Blevins was a photographer and photo director for the paper and was a staff photographer at the Daily News Record in Harrisonburg, Va. ... At the Associated Press in New York City, Barry Renfrew has been named vice president of global business; previously he was deputy international editor. A 26-year veteran of the news cooperative, Renfrew has served as chief in bureaus including London, Sydney and Moscow. ...

Publishers: At The Times-News in Twin Falls, Idaho, Brad Hurd has been named publisher and a regional executive for Lee Enterprises Inc.; previously he was publisher of the Independent Record in Helena, Mont., a job he'd held since 2001 (also a Lee paper). A 25-year veteran of Lee, Hurd has worked in a variety of newsroom and executive positions for company, including running its magazine and book publishing division. ... At Texas' Palestine Herald-Press, Gary Connor has been named publisher; previously he was publisher of the nearby Corsicana Daily Sun. Connor is a 26-year veteran of the Daily Sun, starting out as an ad rep and soon becoming advertising director; he had been publisher in Palestine for the last 13 years. Conversely, at the Daily Sun, Bob Dennis has been named publisher; previously he was publisher of Illinois' Shelbyville Daily Union. An 11-year veteran of the newspaper business, Dennis started as the general manager of the Press Leader in Farmington, Mo., and served four years as production manager of The Register-News in Mount Vernon, Ill. He's been publisher in Shelbyville for the last five years ...

Front office: At the North County Times in Escondido, Calif., Rosanne Cheeseman has been named associate publisher; previously she had been the paper's advertising director. Starting in the business in 1986 at Wisconsin's Edgerton Reporter, Cheeseman eventually became the paper's sales and marketing director. From 1995 to 1998, she was national ad director of Insiders Publishing and joined Lee Enterprises, owner of the Times, in 1998 as director of sales development. ... # >ET