Baton Rouge 'Advocate' Rides out Gustav with MerlinOne E-paper

Posted Monday, September 8, 2008 12:00 am

By: E&P Staff Hurricane Gustav stopped the presses at The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La., but the newspaper published its print editions online beginning last Tuesday evening, thanks to MerlinOne's offer to convert PDF page files to its LiveEdition online newspaper.

"On Tuesday we asked MerlinOne, who does our e-tearsheets, if they could get us up quickly on their E-edition product. By that night they had us up on-line," said Advocate Digital Media Director Freda Yarbrough.

The Advocate uses MerlinOne's electronic tearsheets (ESheets) service to distribute its pages to advertisers. MerlinOne, based in Quincy, Mass., converted those same electronic files into LiveEdition, which enhances the pages with live links. A link from the top of the Advocate's home page took readers to the electronic version of the print edition. By Friday, the Advocate recorded 11,000 reader sessions, with the heaviest use between 9 and 11 am.

LiveEdition presents the newspaper on screen in the exact layout as the printed edition, but with Web tools that allow readers to zoom headlines to read stories and jump pages to continue reading stories, and with live links to advertiser Web sites. Advanced web tools facilitate navigation to the desired place on the page, the edition, section, or previous editions.

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Baton Rouge 'Advocate' Rides out Gustav with MerlinOne E-paper

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