IFRA

Kim Svensen is marketing manager for CCI Europe, which, among its various solutions, develops and markets the CCI NewsGate multimedia publishing solution.

IFRA: What is it that newsroom managers are seeking in their planning solutions today?

Svendsen: There is a demand from media organizations to get the complete power and flexibility needed to not only manage and publish content without limits, but also to add new publishing channels and media properties as needed.

It is not just a desire to expand the business, but a realization that the ‘new media landscape’ is already here, and media houses need a tool to accommodate the consumers demand for a continuous news feed across a wide number of channels.

We feel a discrete sense of panic from the publishers, because they know that they can no longer consider ‘media convergence’ something of the future and something that will place them on the cutting edge, but today a REALLY good online news portal and the ability to add multimedia to the coverage are essential to even staying alive as a news provider.

I know it sounds like the usual ‘blah blah’ in the industry today, but NewsGate is really built from the ground up to accommodate this way of thinking and working. Publishing features like ‘theme pages’ (a kind of microsite on the web covering a specific story from many angles, with as much multimedia stuff as possible) are seriously hard to handle if you cannot get a complete overview of everything that is related to a story in ONE place (in comes the StoryFolder concept).

Many systems offer a broad look at different content types in one place, but only looking at content is like the radar in an airport that only tells where the planes are at any given time. The rest of the planning (when and where the thing should land, taxi, park etc.) is still a manual process. Same thing in many content management systems that are offered today. What really makes a difference is the ability to see WHO is working on WHAT content, WHERE is the content intended to be used, HOW was the background/research material found, what OTHER STORIES might be related to this, WHEN are the updates expected and so on and so on!

The challenge is to get as much of this planning work automated and literally get the budget lists for each day/hour and publication to make ITSELF. It’s all about getting the metadata input and sorted, and this is where NewsGate shines!

So the question “What is it that newsroom managers are seeking in their planning solutions?” is answered by “Not all of them really know.” Many are blinded by the word multimedia or cross media, and I fear that some will invest in systems that are truly capable of importing and exporting different media types, but in a few years the complexity of what the newsroom now has to handle will simply overwhelm them and they’ll have to re-invest in yet another tool that provides better planning…

Newsroom managers today are still primarily from the “old reality” where a story was a text and a photo and planning was about a physical placement – now they’ll have to juggle not only more media, but a LOT of new employee groups working with technology, deadlines, possibilities and limitations that they have NO chance of knowing about. Seriously, asking a photo editor to suddenly edit and manage video is NOT just a matter of file formats!

IFRA: What makes your system so simple that a reporter working remotely can access and update his story, planning, assignments, etc.?

Svendsen: Well, the technology behind CCI NewsGate’s remote connectivity contains a number of access and communication features that can be configured to cater for each individual user’s need:

a. The “fat client”: Normal application installed on each user’s PC or Mac and accesses a central database.

b. The “fit client”: Is meant for consolidated IT-setups where the application really runs on a central server, and only the user interface runs on the local PC.

c. The “thin clients”: E.g. Citrix, X11 or other remote screen controlling systems.

d. Mobile access: NewsGate offers an open API to integrate to existing handheld formats or develop new and weave these into the workflow.

e. Mobile assignment control and messaging: An example could be an editor assigning a task to a reporter, seconds later the NewsGate system sends a text message to the reporter’s mobile phone describing the task (AND the intended use for the content he has to create, relevant sources, deadline, links to other relevant stories etc., so he has the complete picture BEFORE a photo is taken or story written – just an example of planning not just being about the content types… as described in answer 1)

f. Web based: A good way for a reporter in the field to gain access from any computer anywhere.

Again, this is only technology, any supplier can probably provide remote access to some extent, but the real challenge is to put the remote tools into context, i.e. using knowledge of how the different content creators capture, research and perceive various tasks in their specific work procedures to provide communication tools that respect their way of capturing news. Flexibility in the way the system communicates to the folks in the bush is extremely important!

So, what makes the system so simple? That’s fairly easy: You as a manager decide that! We do not dictate how you should get information and to and from the people in the field, you know better than we do – but we give you a number of best-practise tools so you can set it up to match individual needs!

IFRA: What type of overview will your solution give editors/reporters working across multimedia packages?

Svendsen: As mentioned above, the overview CCI NewsGate provides is a constantly updated view of all the usual what, where, who, how, when’s and so on for any content type, task, employee etc., but also a contextualisation of all these things. A piece of content might be planned for one publication but used in another a few minutes after it is filed – meaning that in the lifespan of each piece of content any number of usages, versions and alterations could occur, the system needs to keep track of this and provide an easy way to select the right edition for the right media.

It’s obviously all about metadata – most of the metadata is added automatically by the system, and therefore also automatically make up the planning lists etc., but the users can sort, filter, expand simplify and display listings of ANY kind inside one media or across several desks, geographic locations or the like. Remember, it’s ONE central database (or several databases combined, but from a systems point of view NewsGate can search and index any number of file systems, archives or the like) – so whatever is relevant for you as a user can easily be searched by metadata and saved to dynamically updated lists.

A metaphor for this could be: You go to the zoo and put one of these GPS trackers on your kids so you always know where they are. Now, would you like to see a map with ALL the children in the zoo? Or maybe a map with all the kids wearing blue jackets? Probably not – you are looking for a very specific set of kids, and you need to be allowed to key in all the metadata describing these kids! Not be limited by predefined lists that comes with the system. Maybe a view of all the children’s classmates or classmates’ parents could be helpful in specific situations, but the idea is the same: Slice and dice the content as YOU need it.

IFRA: How have the past months affected the way publishers are seeking solutions, especially considering that many newsrooms face a big challenge in being able to do editorial with a staff that is drastically downsized from what it was? We have noticed some editorial system providers stressing the extent to which their systems multip

ly the workforce. So editors looking for new systems are likely trying to figure out how to make the technology take up as much of the slack as possible. …

Svendsen: Of course overview is key in this situation to make sure that all resources are used efficiently at all times, but another proven way to gain momentum is automation.

Roularta in Belgium is a good example of this – they achieved a 700 percent productivity gain now producing 3000 pages per week by implementing a template-driven workflow. This is not even a theoretical figure that could be real, it actually IS real! Can you imagine the savings they have been able to realize?

Another good way of consolidating resources and making better use of expertises situated in separate newsrooms in a media group is to share desks and create virtual desks.

So yes, the past months have affected the way our prospects and customers look at our solution. And fortunately they find that CCI can help them produce more with less staff and expand to more media channels in less time and with fewer resources.

IFRA: Pricing has got to be a real challenge now, even more than before, knowing that newspapers are in financial trouble and simply cannot afford too high a price. What is your response to this dilemma?

Svendsen: Hmm… An old saying states that any sale should leave both buyer and seller smiling – of course we also adjust to the current market situation, but we also make a big deal out of making sure that the customer’s needs are REALLY clarified and that the system we offer provides an ROI that beats the competition.

Also – our concept of the data center plays a big role when papers under financial pressure look for new systems.

IFRA: We have heard of some providers that are diversifying their business, such as going after magazine markets more, selling solutions to banks, governments, etc., who more and more need their information published... Is your company looking into this? If so, what are the main reasons and potential there?

Svendsen: We have had the same requests, and we are also looking to expand our offerings, but CCI is dedicated to the news industry, so you will not see us provide, e.g., knowledge sharing systems (which NewsGate essentially also provides) to e.g. law firms or government institutions.

IFRA: How much of your planning tools has to do with the type of target publisher you might be going after, i.e. what do/can you provide for that 15,000-circulation publication vs. that of, say, a big media group?

Svendsen: As you know, IT consolidation is a big issue these days – and since many of the smaller papers are part of a bigger media group anyway, a Data Center solution is a great alternative to installing a stand-alone system with hardware cost, maintenance, backups, etc. Here’s how Tribune Company in U.S.A. has done it with a CCI data center: They run two weeks from Chicago and the next two weeks from Los Angeles on synchronized servers. They could add any number of papers, regardless of size or circulation to the system in only weeks.

Saarbrücker Zeitung (Holzbrink) in Germany has something similar, and they added Lausitzer Rundschau in only five weeks with hardly any assistance from CCI and are now producing the paper 100 percent on the SZ hardware. THAT’S cost efficient!

So to answer your question, the functionality is the same whether the system is installed as a stand-alone system or a smaller newspaper “piggy backs” on another installation. Actually a 15,000-circulation paper could probably benefit immensely form “attaching” to other newsrooms. It’s totally configurable how much is visible across properties and at what stage in the story creation process a story is visible to other newsrooms on the same system. Openness is a good thing, but total access to everything would be impossible to control!