By: E&P Staff Three dalies in New Brunswick, Canada, are live or close to it on new editorial systems from Mediaspan's Harris & Baseview division, Ann Arbor, Mich.
The Telegraph-Journal, Saint John, now is entirely published using a Jazbox system. The Moncton Times & Transcript and the Fredericton Daily Gleaner also are moving to Jazbox, as will the three weeklies produced in the Gleaner building.
Brunswick News Inc. Project Manager David Kilfoil said that having all three papers using identical systems "will make it easier to support, improve and leverage our investment, and better plan for disaster recovery." The Telegraph-Journal switched from Macs to PCs, which were used by the other papers.
The group standardized on server and workstation hardware, "right down to the IP and naming schema used for servers at all three sites," said Kilfoil, adding that because the papers' networks are linked to the corporation's wide-area network, changes at one site can be quickly replicated at the others.
The group committed to a PDF workflow for all production system purchases. Said Kilfoil: "We wanted to standardize on Dell PCs and servers. We wanted to standardize on Adobe applications (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator), limiting our use of QuarkXPress. We have standardized on Adobe OpenType fonts (OTF) and purchased new fonts for each building."
"A big benefit," he added, is being able to "store JPEG and PDF files in the database and place them directly on pages without having to convert them to EPS or TIFF formats." All the papers output through Agfa Arkitex Director to a common Agfa platesetter in Moncton, where they are printed.
The papers also plan "semi-automatic" sharing of stories and photos among their Jazbox databases, according to Kilfoil. He added that Jazbox's use of InDesign permits paragraph and character style rather than previous system formats. With staff turnover having left minimal newsroom and IT ability to edit and create new formats and folios, Jazbox allows newsrooms to control styling and make changes as needed on deadline -- with the option of later making the changes permanent.
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