D O N A L D.  L.  M c L A G A N. '64.

The following feature article appeared in the campus publication Mosaic in December, 1999.

AN INFORMATION INNOVATOR TRANSFORMS THE DELIVERY OF THE NEWS

If knowledge is power, then Donald L. McLagan ’64 is creating the power elite. McLagan has taken the barrage of round-the-clock news coverage of world events and harnessed it with computer technology to create NewsEdge Corp., a leading Internet-based company that delivers custom-packaged news to hundreds of clients such as the White House, the United Nations, and IBM.

"Information is an over-solved problem, " says McLagan, the chairman, president, and chief executive officer of NewsEdge. "People are deluged with information and they worry about missing the piece that matters most to them. It isn’t good enough to have a search engine any more because you get too many responses. The trick is not to fit the person into some vertical information space, but rather to form the information around the individual."

For the past three decades, McLagan has been at the forefront of innovative efforts to manage information and make it more useful. He began his career by starting the advanced computer techniques division within the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense - Comptroller, where he was associated with the development of the ARPA network, a precursor of today’s Internet. During the next 15 years, he applied his expertise at Data Resources, Inc., an economic database company that used timesharing technology, and helped to develop the company from a start-up to an $85-million-per-year operation. In 1985, he joined the spreadsheet company Lotus Development Corp. as vice president and general manager of the information service division, and, over the course of three years, helped to develop it into the world’s largest publisher of databases on CD-ROM.

After building a string of successful companies for other people, McLagan hungered to run his own business. Seeing the news as an unexploited niche in the information services business, he set out on his own in 1988 to provide corporate clients quick and easy access to news via their PCs and founded Desktop Data Inc., the predecessor to NewsEdge. Ten years later, Desktop Data merged with a competitor, Individual Inc., to form NewsEdge. Based in Burlington, MA, NewsEdge filters news from wire services, newspapers, magazines, and newsletters, then sells and delivers it to the employees of 1,450 organizations through Intranet, extranet, and e-mail systems. The business also operates Individual.com, which offers a free subscription business news service on the Web to more than one million registered users, subsidized by advertising, sponsorships, and e-commerce. Called the "news guru" by the Boston Business Journal, McLagan and his achievements have been chronicled by publications such as Forbes, Information World Review, and Individual Investor, which profiled him in a story on "Best Undiscovered CEOs."

An engineering focus
McLagan discovered the power of computers while studying engineering at Trinity. He remembers how, during his junior year, Karl W. Hallden Professor of Engineering Emeritus August E. Sapega arranged for him and several other students to gain access to the highly inaccessible computer in what was then the United Aircraft Research Laboratory, now United Technologies.

While a student at Trinity, McLagan spent two summers working at United Aircraft and also learned that a gap existed between people with technical skills and those with management skills. He has spent his career trying to bridge that gap. After graduating with honors in 1964, McLagan continued his studies at Trinity for another year to earn an additional bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, then took formal steps toward integrating his expertise in engineering with additional skills in computers and business by earning a M.B.A. at Harvard in 1967.

Being an entrepreneur at the helm of a company that tracks the perpetually changing news business is demanding. McLagan finds he must work to schedule time with his wife, Barbara, and their children, Christopher, 15, and Marnie, 14. What little free time that remains is hugely precious, he says. McLagan makes time for Trinity in his treasured off-hours. An active alumnus who often shares his expertise with the College’s engineering department and career services office, McLagan is also a member of Trinity’s Board of Trustees. In that capacity, he recently chaired a task force that examined how technology affects learning and research in a liberal arts environment. Lisa Alvarez-Calderon Cox ‘88, who served as a trustee with McLagan from 1994-97 and worked with him and the College’s development office to increase alumni participation in annual giving, says his mark on the College has been significant. "Don took a strong leadership position with the Annual Fund," she notes. "What I found so impressive is that he took his role so seriously; analyzing the situation as though it were his own business. He’s passionate. He’s also intuitive and analytical at the same time. He’s very committed to the College."

McLagan’s company has succeeded in enlightening thousands of users about the news that matters most to them. And that number only stands to increase. Earlier this month, RoweCom Inc., a leader in business-to-business e-commerce solutions, announced plans to buy NewsEdge Corp. for $227 million in stock. The merger would combine RoweCom’s electronic catalog of business articles with NewsEdge’s current news stories and provide customers with an even more comprehensive source of information.

Once the merger is completed, McLagan says he’ll leave the company, take some time off, and then consider his next move. Being an entrepreneur, he has found, doesn’t leave him much choice. "Being an entrepreneur is not something that you do; it’s something that you are," he observes. "Being an entrepreneur is not learned; it’s innate. I don’t think you ever stop."

                                                                                                                           Suzanne Zack