It was enough to give the newspaper digital-asset-management fever.

Milt Goldwasser, vice president and chief information officer of The Union-Tribune’s parent company, Copley Newspapers, says Copley has found the only sure-fire antidote: It is going to install an extensive digital-asset-management system at all its newspapers, beginning with The Union-Tribune.

After considering several programs, including some ready-made, off-the-shelf solutions, Copley chose Excalibur Tech-nologies’ RetrievalWare, a flexible, highly customizable system that can be molded to the way The Union-Tribune and other Copley papers work. John Steinhauer, an Excalibur consultant working with The Union-Tribune to set up the system, says his job is to get RetrievalWare to mimic the newsroom’s current workflow. “For us to add five or 10 minutes [to the workflow] would have been a game-breaker,” he says.

New News It’s a multiple-media world, and already journalists at some newspapers split their time between print, online and even cable-news duties. To train—or retrain—editorial staffers for these rapidly-changing roles, Virginia Commonwealth University launched the first phase of its 21st Century News Center, a journalism-education program emphasizing multiple media. “Most communications companies now own more than one medium, and the implications are affecting everyone,” says Joyce Wise Dodd, executive director. Offering training for professional journalists and a master’s-degree program, the center opened its doors in November, bolstered by $1.25 million from Richmond-based Media General Inc. and Time Inc., as well as a $250,000 pledge of assistance from IFRA, the international newspaper-technology organization. Along with courses on multiple-media reporting, editing and managing, students will be immersed in new information-technology tools. Already on the books are infrared, radiofrequency and CAT5 cable technology. Seminars for working journalists begin this year. Visit the 21st Century News Center at www.vcu.edu/newscenter.

The system will use a standard World Wide Web browser interface so that staff can access it whether they use an IBM-compatible PC or an Apple Macintosh.

Once the RetrievalWare system is fully operational at The Union-Tribune (a year-long process expected to be completed in June), it will automatically download and index Associated Press and in-house photos. Infographics and other art will also be indexed and archived for future use.

The Union-Tribune and other Copley newspapers eventually will archive images and text in four interconnected Retrieval-Ware systems. Located throughout the country, the systems will appear as a single, unified database to anyone searching the system.

“It will also come with security features so they can safely search repositories across the United States,” says Steinhauer.

Best of all, says Mark Demers, Excalibur’s director of marketing, Copley employees won’t require extensive training. While Excalibur now teaches a team of Copley employees the ins and outs of the system, Copley will eventually train its own staff. “We have been following their workflow closely,” Demers says. “If anything, we’re making it easier.”