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. ...