Python: 491 - 353 characters
Still quite some room for improvement I guess, all comments welcome.
Strategy: finding all occurences of the first letter, and then trying to fetch the word in all directions.
import sys;r=range(-1,2);k=''.join;q="row %s, column %s"
a=[l[:-1:2]for l in sys.stdin]
b=sys.argv[1];c=len(a[0])
for x,y in[(x/c,x%c)for x,h in enumerate(k(map(k,a)))]:
for i,j in[(i,j)for i in r for j in r if i or j<>0]:
if k([a[x+z*i][y+z*j]for z in range(len(b))if 0<=x+z*i "+q%(x+z*i+1,y+z*j+1)
Example usage:
cat input.txt | python test.py CODEGOLF
Example output:
row 12, column 8 --> row 5, column 1
