Press
Monday, August 06, 2007
Houston Community Newspapers goes live with TERA’s GN3
On July 21st , the Houston Community Newspapers, of Houston, TX, went live with the first editions of its papers published with the latest Tera’s GN3 content management system
Houston Community Newspapers is a division of ASP Westward LP. With a weekly circulation of over 650,000, HCN has an aggressive timetable to implement their vision.
The deployment schedule revealed to be quite tight but Tera Digital Publishing succeeded in completing the installation in a very compact time.
“Tera has been able to meet the demanding schedule with a combination of well-designed systems, effective training and an enthusiastic customer” – says Peter Monfiletto, director of IT for HCN “Our editorial staff can’t wait. They keep asking, ’when am I going to get this?’
“The Tera system is incredibly easy to use, incredibly powerful, and incredibly intuitive,” adds Mr Monfiletto, “Tera’s technology is perfectly aligned with our company’s infrastructure and the product is ‘right priced. We met with every vendor at NEXPO,” – continues Mr Monfiletto - “and Tera stood apart as a company offering a comprehensive product, great code and an overwhelmingly fresh experience.”
The Tera GN3 publishing software and Tark archiving system enabled Houston Community Newspapers (HCN) to increase editorial resources in all of its communities while centralizing and streamlining processes such as copy desk, page layout, production and archiving in its Houston headquarters. In addition, the Tera software will enable HCN to publish breaking news first to its local websites reinforcing the newspapers’ growing importance as dominant community news portals.
Tools for coordination and management were the key for Jonathan McElvy, Editorial Director for HCN. “With Tera, we have a system that can help us be better managers of budgets, assignments and people,“ said McElvy. “Our papers and our editors are spread out. They need to make corrections from all over the city. We don’t want to stop people from talking, but now we can also coordinate directly through SMS, Outlook and calendars.”
McElvy also noted the challenge of delivering news across the wide range of current platforms. “In terms of interactivity, podcasts, webcasts, videostreaming: we could not move our papers forward without this system.”
“Houston Community Newspapers is setting the direction for forward-thinking community publishing for the entire industry,” said Gustavo Rios, Managing Director of Tera-US. “We are excited to be helping them to serve their local markets and streamline their operations.”
HCN’s goal has been to allow its reporters and editorial staff to expand their ability to cover local news by freeing them from distracting responsibilities such as page layout that were inefficiently being performed in every local news office. Centralizing this capability alone will let HCN free up hours of reporting and editing time in each local office each week.
According to Jeremy Pafford, Design Director for HCN, the Tera system was alone in providing total integration among content gathering, editing, design and publishing. Said Pafford, “It is almost seamless. One piece of data goes through the entire system. Change it one place and it changes everywhere. That plus the capability to multitask on pages will greatly enhance our workflow.”