Peter Martyn Winter, writer, sailor, singer and pioneering new media executive, passed away on March 8 in Portland, Maine, surrounded by his beloved family.
Peter was born on the outskirts of Wellington, New Zealand, on September 19, 1949. He was raised in the North Island dairy and farming district of Taranaki and schooled at Francis Douglas Memorial College in New Plymouth. He loved rugby, surfing, hiking, rough-housing, partying and working hard - the man was molded for motion, taking on the world and making it his own. ‘When you are born at the end of the railroad tracks,’ he often said, ‘you want to know what’s at the other end.’ After completing his master’s degree at Wellington’s Victoria University, he set forth to find out.
Peter’s initial wandering took him to southeast Asia and overland through India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. He hopped the last flight out of Beirut during the Yom Kippur War and landed in Paris, coaching rugby to bankers. Then followed a final burst over the channel to England, where they almost spoke his language. Peter dove into a range of pursuits with equally boundless enthusiasm - running a pub in Tugby, working on a mushroom farm, driving a lorry - before finding his calling at the BBC, where he honed his writing and editing skills and worked on the launch of the CeeFax, the world’s first teletext information service, which used a telephone line connected to a TV set to transmit text and graphics over the airwaves. By the end of his time at the BBC, he was hooked on technology. Communications technology.
In 1981, The Tribune Company brought Peter to Chicago to build an industry-first digital team at the Chicago Sun-Times and to produce Keyfax, a digital television broadcast. There he met the first of many Americans who would become his lifelong mates, and fell head over heels in love with America.
A business trip to New York cemented his affection for the city and its environs, and he moved there shortly thereafter. Once in New York, Peter founded the interactive media consultancy, Digital Applications International. Amidst a global gold rush between the UK, Japan, France, Canada and Germany to create the standard for digital publishing, he became a sought-after keynote speaker and advisor to companies such as IBM, Gannett, News Corp, and Citibank on interactive services definition. He authored one of the first books on interactive media, The Commonsense Guide to Teletext and Videotex. His relentless curiosity into the evolution of the news business encompassed audiotex as well, a precursor to today’s speech recognition and personal assistants. At DAI, Peter used his natural aptitude with both people and technology to translate between the business clients and tech consultants, fostering close relationships with both.
In New York, Peter built a tight-knit community, growing enduring connections over long steak dinners at Keen’s, dry martinis at The Algonquin, and nights out downtown before catching the last train home to his adored English Setter, Pommie. Foremost among these new friendships was his future wife, Betsy Carpenter, manager of collections at the Guggenheim Museum. After a whirlwind courtship and thirteen increasingly creative proposals, they married in Betsy’s native Maine in 1988 and had two kids, Thomas and Cecilia, in 1990 and 1992.
After selling DAI, Peter brought his expertise to the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, where the advent of the internet was proving to be a harbinger of major industry disruptions to come. Peter and his team crisscrossed the country traveling to more than 1,600 member newspapers touting new technologies, bearing stern warnings, and promoting alternative advertising formats to the tradition-bound industry.
In 1994, Peter found an ear for his prescient ideas at Cox Enterprises in Atlanta. The leaders at Cox were not going to let the newly born internet devour their profits or prominence - it was a giant corporation with national presence in several industries and had the bandwidth and the drive to survive. He was soon named President of Cox Interactive Media (CIM), a new standalone division of Cox. Under Peter’s spirited direction, CIM built a new internet content business known as ‘City Sites’, each with their own brands and revenue streams, in 35 of Cox’s local newspaper, radio, and cable TV markets.
Simultaneously, the indefatigable Peter spearheaded the creation of New Century Network, a consortium of the major US newspapers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Knight-Ridder, and the Chicago Tribune. These important news providers needed to form a united digital presence to retain control of access to their stories and reporting. As acting CEO of NCN, Peter’s mission was to guide these competing outlets in a consolidated effort to harness the surging power of the internet.
Peter retired in 2003 to devote time to his family and pursue his writing career. First up was a three-year sojourn in Barcelona peppered with extensive travel, long Spanish lunches, afternoons spent sailing and writing the first drafts for two books. Then followed a return to Atlanta for the kids to resume their education at the Atlanta International School, where Peter served on the board and worked with Betsy on a written history of the school. Following the kids’ graduations, Peter and Betsy moved permanently to their summer cabin in Georgetown, Maine, spending the winter months in an array of warmer climes including Valencia, Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, and New Zealand. When not writing for his two blogs (Blast of Winter and Life of Fiction) Peter devoted much of his time to others – mentoring young people, consulting to startups and media companies, coaching rugby, and generously sharing his acquired wisdom with the wide world. Peter’s gift for connecting with individuals of all ages and backgrounds made him excellent not just at making friends on a dime but at staying in touch with them, and he maintained extensive and colorful correspondences with friends around the world. Equally as comfortable bodysurfing in Taranaki, presenting in a New York City boardroom, or quietly communing with his devoted seagull, Henrietta, on the rugged Georgetown shore, he was the living embodiment of his oft-invoked favorite expression - ‘you only go ‘round once!’
Peter leaves his wife, Betsy and two amazing kids, Thomas and Cecilia Winter. They are proud to carry his spirit and humor within their hearts. He is also survived by beloved family in New Zealand: mother Maureen Middleton, brothers Brendan, Gerard, John and Mark, dear sister Krysten, and his cousins, nieces and nephews. He is preceded in death by his father, Thomas Patrick Winter, stepfather Arthur Middleton, daughter Rosie Winter, and dear friend Tim Treacy. Peter’s family and his many friends will miss his eternal optimism and energy. He loved this life and regretted mightily that he would not live to see all the wonders that he was convinced humanity and its technology would come to invent in the future.
A service will be held on July 8th at 2:00pm at the Phippsburg Congregational Church, followed by a festive memorial at 4:30pm at the Maine Maritime Museum.
