As newspapers continue publishing more stories on the Web first, software companies are upgrading their editorial applications to help clients move into the digital era.

Most of the latest systems are closely integrated with the print side and are bringing down walls between news editors and the “Web guys.”

Digital Technology International (www.dtint.com), which launched WebSpeed—its Web-first publishing application—a little more than a year ago, recently unveiled DTI Lightning, an updated and rebranded version of the program.

DTI Lightning gives editors complete control over content and how it is published, whether to the Web, print, mobile phones, e-mails or text message alerts, says Steve Nilan, DTI vice president of marketing. Editors no longer need to make a second copy of a print story before sending it to the Web department for publishing. It requires no knowledge of HTML and no technical skills, he says.

Carl Davaz, managing editor of The Register-Guard in Eugene, Ore., which was the testing site for the first version of the software, says it’s intuitive for users, allows easy integration of photos, audio and video, and can assemble and publish pages automatically when stories reach a certain stage in the workflow. Reporters can now start a story in Adobe, publish several Web updates and finish the print version in the same application, he says.

“They could type something and hit a key, and it would immediately publish to the Web,” Davaz says. “They would then continue to write in another element of the story that would be published in the newspaper tomorrow.”

Most of the major software companies that sell to newspaper companies offer Web publishing products: CCI Europe (www.ccieurope.com) sells the Escenic (www.escenic.com) system as part of its CCI NewsGate software, EidosMedia (www.eidosmedia.com) has Méthode, Protec (www.protecmedia.com) offers MILENIUM Cross Media software integrated with Atex’s (www.atex.com) Polopoly, and Tera US Inc. (www.teradp.com) offers GNWeb.

SAXOTECH (www.saxotech.com) also has a Web-first publishing software, which it prefers to call “multimedia, multichannel production,” says Peter Ibsen, SAXOTECH’s executive vice president of products and strategy. That’s because, he says, the industry has moved away from creating content only for print or the Web or television or radio.

“Today it’s much more, ‘OK, we are content producers,’ ” Ibsen says. “You do not look at the channel first. You look at the audience first, and say, ‘Which audience do I want to create content for?’ ”

Many Web-first publishing applications lack features such as planning and workflow, Ibsen says. “They do not run a newsroom,” he added.

With that in mind, SAXOTECH combined its online content-management system with half of its traditional editorial system to create Mediaware Center.

“Almost everything that you need to do in the Web part of the content-management system you also can do in the print side, which is nice,” says Elaine Helm, new media editor for The Herald in Everett, Wash., which uses the software.

In the past, Helm had to copy content from Quark pages, fix missing headlines or images, then tell the system where to put the content and in what order on the Web site. Sounds simple, but Helm says the process was time-consuming.

Today, she can publish a story to the Web, tag it so it shows up with related content and give it priority so it’s placed where she wants it on the home page. “All I really need to do is go in and check that it came through,” Helm says.

Some of the software programs also make it easier for newspapers to publish advertising on the Web first. Atex’s Polopoly, which Atex purchased in 2007, also has become a Web-first advertising platform, says Peter Marsh, Atex’s chief technology officer.

Polopoly allows editors to create Web pages or sites for major news events—for example, a small-town athlete making it to the Olympics—without waiting days or weeks for a Web department to write the code, Marsh says. It also immediately makes the online inventory available on Atex’s advertising system.

Digital Web Press Starts Rolling

By Mark Toner

Call it Rosebud.

The code name for the first digital press capable of printing broadsheet-size newspapers, the new HP Inkjet Web Press will roar to life at the parent company of Investor’s Business Daily (www.investors.com) early this year, printing marketing pieces and financial statements—a task Hewlett Packard (www.hp.com) hopes will allow the new printing technology to slide into the newspaper business.

Unveiled at drupa last year, the press features a 30-inch web and can print broadsheet newspaper pages at 400 feet per minute (“Stepping Into the Future,” July/August 2008, p. 36).

Aurelio Maruggi, vice president and general manager of HP’s Inkjet High-Speed Production Solutions division, says the company’s conversations with publishers led HP to “develop the product in a size that allows for full-broadsheet printing—as opposed to shrinking newspapers’ existing formats.” The press also uses a bonding agent allowing it “to work on virtually any newsprint stock,” he says.

At presstime, the first press was being installed at O’Neil Data Systems LLC (www.oneildata.com), which publishes Investor’s Business Daily. The press initially will print personalized marketing messages, financial statements and explanation of benefits documents, but “newspaper printing is one of the possible targets for the press,” Maruggi says. A spokesman for O’Neil declined to comment. Other newspaper publishers are in discussions with HP about the technology, according to Maruggi, who declined to identify them.

Ongoing conversations with newspaper publishers, Maruggi says, have revolved around solutions for printing personalized advertising and editorial content, as well as creating networks of smaller “distribute and print” centers. The press also targets book publishers by making short-run, “on-demand” production of books economically feasible, HP officials say.

Several suppliers have developed solutions for the press, including Hunkeler (www.hunkeler.ch), whose paper-handling system includes an unwinder, rotary cutter, drum collator and in-line folder that can be used for newspapers and book signatures. At drupa, MBO (www.mboamerica.com) demonstrated two folding units and a mobile-stream delivery unit designed to work with the press.

The one thing the product cannot yet do is replace an existing print workflow. Robert Ivan, founder of the Metaprinter blog (http://metaprinter.com/?p=66) about newspapers, printing and digital media, notes that a typical newspaper press currently prints 60 times faster than HP’s inkjet technology.

“Moore’s Law, if it applies here loosely, suggests that the HP will be able to print a complete newspaper as fast as the offset web presses in 12 years,” Ivan says. “See you in 2020.”