The recent appointment of Hatty Reisman as president of Salter Street New Media is the first major shift in the infant company’s move to become a leading player on both the Internet and the stock market.

Before joining Salter, Reisman was vp of corporate development for the Ontario Privatization Secretariat, where she was charged with the privatization review of tvontario and the establishment of the Ontario Centre for Advanced Technology in Learning.

‘The opportunity to be president of Salter New Media is a wonderful blend of my skills,’ says Reisman, whose resume also includes vp, business affairs, general counsel and corporate secretary of Atlantis Communications, where she was a key member of the team that implemented its transition from a privately held to publicly traded company.

So it’s by no coincidence that Reisman arrives just two months after Salter New Media announced plans to go public within a year. Although the company has not yet signed with any underwriters, it made the commitment to go public when it completed its $7.5 million equity financing in May, which included a $5-million special warrant deal and an additional $2.5 million from Salter Street Films and MT&T Holdings (a subsidiary of mtt owned by Aliant).

‘In principle, Salter New Media is an idea lab and a developer of content, and because one of its parents is also in the content business, there’s naturally going to be synergies there as well,’ says Catherine Tait, president and ceo of Salter Street Films.

Currently Salter New Media has five products (websites) on the market: Canadian Investor, an online audio magazine for investors and a brand extension of Salter Street’s tv series, broadcast weekly on cbc; Q1234, endorsed by the tse, which casts live quarterly earnings calls with equity analysts; Triple Bypass, which focuses on hip-hop music, combining interviews with hip-hop artists, and live audio and video broadcasts, as well as an e-commerce component; Bargoon, the first Internet auction site in Canada, which focuses exclusively on local markets; and 22 Online, which offers a parody of each day’s top stories in news, sports, entertainment and business, appropriates Salter Street’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes, in its sixth season on cbc.

‘What’s interesting about our model is we’re hitting all sorts of things. Some are driven by e-commerce, some are driven by ad revenues and some by subscription. The whole world is trying to figure out the right business model and we’re playing with all of them,’ says Reisman.

Within the next six months, while the company searches for the appropriate underwriters, Reisman will be focusing on the marketing and business plans for each of the company’s existing products, as well as developing new ones.

‘We are developing new projects all the time and we’ll be launching new things on a regular basis. We also have an acquisition strategy. We plan to be a big player and aggressively seek out acquisition opportunities in areas that mesh with what we’re doing,’ says Reisman, who was not at liberty to discuss particulars.

Admittedly, the Internet industry in the Atlantic region is growing as barriers to entry are much lower than in film and tv production and location is almost irrelevant, but access to capital is still key.

‘The advantage to Salter New Media is that we have a low-cost operational base and years of experience raising capital,’ says Tait, adding: ‘We see the Canadian industry has been slow to pick up on the opportunities in the Internet industry. Canadians are among the highest users in the world, but in terms of producers of content and services we are extremely slow, so we see this as a huge chance to play aggressively.’

Meantime, Reisman is commuting between Halifax and her home base in Toronto, where she is close to the investment community, marketers and advertisers, but where Salter New Media will be permanently based is still under review.