News Companies Move to Singular Platforms
Important Details: Platforms are hardly glamorous, and many news executives’ eyes start rolling back in their heads when they see the content management system slideshows. In the multi-platform age, though, underlying systems are absolutely integral to business success.
To that point, three recent announcements point to the diverse ways that singular-oriented platforms are being embraced. In the first, Dow Jones will become the second large US publisher to adopt Milan-based EidosMedia’s Methode publishing platform, across brands and across distribution types, powering the print and web editions of The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s weekly magazine and its online edition, and the free financial news web site MarketWatch.com. The Seattle Times became Eidos’ first US customer earlier this year, joining the Financial Times, other European customers, and other installations in India and South Africa. “When we first drew up the blueprint for Methode nearly 10 years ago, we had in mind the kind of multi-channel, multiple-media, global news operation that Dow Jones is planning today,” said EidosMedia Group President Angelo Grampa.
Importantly, when implemented, Methode will unify the process for content creation between website and print editors and writers. In addition, it enables the planning, tracking and managing of production across multiple versions and editions, allowing for localized news and advertising.
The Journal’s Jim Pensiero made the point that the move is both about cost-saving and serving readers in all the ways they expect now to be served. “We wanted to implement a completely channel-neutral policy,” he said. “We’re expecting to achieve significant synergies and savings,” he said.
In the second announcement, publishing platform company Saxotech, based in Tampa, Fl. announced a new partnership with Pluck, one of the leading user-generated content software partners to US papers (see Insights 14 March 2007, News and Social Publishing Meet and Match). Saxotech, which counts McClatchy and GateHouse newspapers among its clients, will be able to combine in-market, user-generated content with staff-created content. Currently, most user-gen content systems are separate, crippling publishers’ ability to mix and match professional and amateur content, to create new products, and to syndicate.
In the third announcement, Journal Communications is the latest news publisher to sign up with Clickability to support its online publishing business. San Francisco-based Clickability is a growing platform enabler, offering to move publishers to “the cloud” as a way to save money, energy and time. Its Software as a Service (SaaS) model for web content creation allows publishers to rely on Clickability’s own innovation in such things as user-gen and video creation, rather than depending on and investing in their own development. Journal Communications is a Milwaukee-based media company with operations in publishing, radio and television broadcasting and interactive media. In addition to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, it owns and operates 52 community newspapers in Wisconsin and Florida and 35 radio stations and 11 television stations in 12 states. The agreement covers all these properties. Clickability, which just won a best web content management solution CODiE award from the SIIA, now claims more than a dozen newspaper clients, in addition to others in broadcast news, academic and enterprise sectors.
Implications: Outsell believes that such single-platform moves are critcal to success in the second decade of this century. Clickability’s growing family of web solutions is one major step; investing in systems that enable both web and print publishing is the leap.
Investing in new systems can be expensive, and news publishers’ capital budgets are in decline. Still the investment in systems that allow efficient single-input of all relevant news content (staff stories and blogs, audio, video, and user-generated content) is fundamental for future success. Get it all in one place as easily as possible, making the technology transparent to staff/creators, and then multiply its distribution and syndication. That’s the shorthand for success in this new digital-heavy world.
There’s no single solution for singular publishing, but the principles behind need to be embraced by all those who still plan to be in the news business in 2015.