Newsroom Productivity Gets A Boost From Web Browsers, Groupware
Two decades ago, running an editorial system on anything other than a monolithic front end would have been unthinkable. Recently, client-server systems using such standard programs as Microsoft Word and QuarkXPress have become the rule. Now consider handling a day's worth of newspaper text and images using a ubiquitous office-productivity program--or a World Wide Web browser.
Unthinkable? No longer. A stroll around NEXPO's pre-press area showed that editorial products took a close second to classified systems in terms of interest.
For several years, manufacturers of pre-press tools such as raster-image processors have introduced software allowing staffers to monitor jobs using Web browsers instead of expensive, proprietary software. But Danish editorial-system developer SAXoTECH now lets reporters and editors file, browse, edit and format copy from a Web browser. Soon, they'll be able to crop and edit images, as well as assign stories and images to pages. SAXoTECH's @ccess modules have the same functions and appearance as its Windows and Macintosh modules.
The goal? "If you can find any type of computer that handles Netscape, you can do...anything you can in the newsroom," explained Lars Halkjaer, SAXoTECH's market-development manager. Intended now as a way for copy editors to occasionally work from home or reporters to typeset and file stories from the road, the system could conceivably create a virtual newsroom free of proprietary tools and connected only by the Internet.
The tool driving such innovation is Java, a Web programming language that runs on any kind of computer. "It's starting us in the direction of a fully interactive editorial system," Halkjaer said.
Scores of other industries have seized on IBM's Lotus groupware. With the help of a newsroom veteran, Lotus now makes its way into editorial. NewsEngin Inc. of St. Louis and DeskNet Inc. of New York City offer an integrated editorial solution based on Lotus Notes. The database builds on Notes' file-sharing ability with newspaper-specific wire-capture, editing, calendar and production tools. Founded by former St. Louis Post-Dispatch information-technology manager George Landau, NewsEngin handles the front end; DeskNet interfaces with QuarkXPress. More than a dozen news organizations, including the 15 newspapers of Howard Publications in Oceanside, Calif., use the systems. They also feature reporting tools such as contact managers and computer-assisted-reporting modules (see "Newsroom Aids"). Digital Data Publishing Inc. of Weston, Fla., showed a similar Lotus system using a Dalai intranet server.
BEHIND THE BUYING
While such innovation provided startling glimpses of the future, NEXPO attendees also focused on the here and now. "People are coming for clinical looks at systems," said Mark D. Wasserman, program director for Unisys Corp. of Blue Bell, Pa. "They're serious."
Clearly, serious Year 2000 concerns drive serious buying. The other push: pagination, more attractive than ever with the advent of computer-to-plate (see "The Digital Drive Continues For Efficiencies, Quality"). Yet observers express concern that Y2K problems hamper equally needed improvements. Suppliers are "not going to provide new features until they get over that hump," asserted industry consultant David M. Cole.
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SAXoTech displayed software that handles editorial functions with a World Wide Web browser. |
One such feature is digital-asset management. Demand drives innovations among archive suppliers who extend services beyond the morgue. For example, Cascade Systems Inc.'s MediaSphere, a multimedia system most frequently used to store text, images and graphics, now offers assignment-tracking, production-management and corporate-communication tools, said Ian Bryson, director of marketing for the Andover, Mass., company. Such applications provide "the ability to integrate into the production process without adding cost."
"Asset-management systems," as the Cincinnati-based Gannett Media Technologies International calls its DC4, archive, index and retrieve "all types of items publications consider assets," including text, photos, image files, and QuarkXPress and PageMaker pages. Once retrieved in their native format, files can be reused and modified, said Mike Tucker, GMTI's marketing manager.
Increasingly, Web-browser interfaces allow internal and external users to access archive databases regardless of department, machine or location.
Traditional vendors providing the front ends at the heart of editorial work often remain "too little, too late, in recognizing the need for 'collect once, use multiple,' " asserted Jack H. Stanley, Houston Chronicle operations vice president. To bridge those gaps, suppliers such as JinTek LLC of San Diego demonstrated a QuarkXPress extension serving as an image database. Quark readies its own client-server digital-asset management system allowing 'XPress page elements to be stored as discrete objects.
As a result of such third-party efforts, "you're going to wind up with things glued on top of things," Stanley said.
Suppliers counter that newspaper managers, too, often underrate their digital assets. "The archive is a piece of the editorial system--a critical piece," Wasserman said.
With asset management--and, oh, yes, the Internet--joining page design and production on the list of newsroom responsibilities, staffers require training, said Mechealle Hanks, director of technology and information systems at the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader.
Open client-server systems pose a human-resource challenge. "The price tag is increasing because the skill set is used across all companies," observed Elizabeth Sholar, Thomson Newspapers' publishing-systems director.
Following his paper's transition to full pagination on a Digital Technology International system, Rod Miller, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution's pre-press operations manager, predicted a future of never-ending hardware, network and software upgrades; persistent hunger for memory and disk space; and constant searches for technicians. Still, he told workshop attendees, the process is worth it.
"Pagination, done properly, will break every barrier." That's good only if a paper actually wants to change, he cautioned. "If you are not willing to change your culture and use the talents of your people, you will fail," Miller said matter-of-factly.
Caveat emptor.