Congrats to our partners Ask A Ninja, who were named Best Series in the first ever YouTube video awards. Ninja speaks here.

I usually wait till they've come in the door, but news is leaking out (see Paid Content, for example) that Neil Chase, of the New York Times, is joining our team here in Sausalito. Neil joins us to run our Author Services group, which is growing rapidly (we're at more than 120 authors now.) Neil will report to me.

Neil's current post is as editor of continuous news at the New York Times, a job which required him to work with a diverse group of Times reporters, editors and managers to insure an ongoing flow of quality stories through the Times' machine. Prior to that he was the Deputy Editor of the New York Times Digital. Before the Times, Neil lived in San Francisco and, for five years, held the job of Managing Editor at Marketwatch, a post which required he have a hand in just about every aspect of the company's operations. His experience at a fast growing startup as well as an established leader in online journalism are a perfect fit for FM.

Neil will be starting next month, but you can all welcome him via his new FM email - nchase at federatedmedia dot net.

Welcome, Neil!

If you are, you must check out the new FM Graphic Arts MetaWeblog. It's very, very cool.

If you want to talk to the folks running the business, you should get to know Darcy Finlay, who joins us to support our Chief Architect, Publisher, and our COO (that'd be Chas Edwards, Andre Torrez, and Jason Weisberger). Darcy has a interesting and diverse background in administration including production and office coordination on Toy Story 2, as well as intense cardiac scheduling. That should help around here!

Darcy is also - her words - a "hack photographer" - but her work has been published on sailing sites and SFBayImages. Some day soon she hopes to finish a website for her Mother's art and her photography. When she does, we'll link to it!

Chas Edwards, our intrepid publisher, on the supposed lack of inventory online:

Huh?! Not enough online inventory? Even at top brands like Yahoo, certain large swaths of the site (Mail, My Yahoo, Groups, etc.) run house ads and cut-rate remnant deals. Ad networks don’t have anywhere near 100% fill rates for participating publishers, and the most efficient ad network of all -– Google’s AdSense program –- serves PSAs a fair amount of the time.

Clearly there’s not an inventory problem online, but instead a quality inventory problem.

Stephanie Loleng joins us as the Finance Assistant/Contracts Administrator for the Operations Department at FM. She comes to FM after a two-year stint as an independent radio producer for National Public Radio member stations in the San Francisco Bay Area. She also worked as a print reporter and editor for Asian American newspapers, and continues to look for the next good story. Before diving into the world of journalism, Stephanie worked at LookSmart as a web editor for the travel section, then traveled and lived in Asia for a year and a half. Stephanie's currently working on a collection of poetry and short fiction. Welcome, Stephanie!

A small contingent of us are in Austin for SXSW, if any FM pals are here, please come see us at our informal party Monday.

The details:
Monday, March 12, 7:15 p.m on...
Ginger Man Pub
304 W Fourth St
Austin, TX 78701-3919
(512) 473-8801

See you there!

A post on TechCrunch tonight picks up on some private research that discusses any number of details about FM and its purported plans. Despite the title of the post, FM is neither looking to sell, nor do we need financing. Sure, any startup has its price, but ours is dictated by a very important caveat - anyone who is looking to purchase FM must first look to our business model, and determine if it wants to take care of the most important asset we have - our relationship with our publishers. Just to be clear, here at FM we are not focused on selling our business, or even raising money (we don't need any at the moment). What we are focused on is adding value to our publisher's business. That's it.

-- John Battelle