Tera Digital Publishing S.r.l

Press

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Tera's GN3 takes New Daily Live in Print and Web

Milan, Italy, March 5, 2008 – Italy’s latest ‘newspaper of the future’ has gone live in four major cities using a complete cross-media publishing system from Tera Digital Publishing.
DNews, a lively, daily free full-color tabloid, published its first issue in Milan, Rome, Verona and Bergamo on Monday, February 25, with an initial print run of 600,000. The newspaper is joined operationally to a tightly-integrated breaking-news web site of the same name (http://www.dnews.eu).
A team of only 34 journalists produces content for both outlets as a single, seamless 24-hour editorial operation across all cities, thanks to Tera’s specialization in cross-media solutions. The DNews web site began showing PDFs of DNews pages immediately when the newspaper began publishing and will have live content starting March 11.
“DNews is unique in that it is not the usual slim, throw-away free metro newspaper which is, typically, full of abbreviated wire service stories”, said Tera managing director Franz Rossi. “DNews has 48 pages each day in each city, filled with well-written, sometimes lengthy news reports, features and pictures, of the kind you expect in a paid-for title”.
The new publication is seen as a bold move to advance Italian daily journalism after a similar free newspaper chain, E Polis with outlets in 15 Italian cities, folded in July last year. But the publishers, MAG Group, a group of Rome entrepreneurs believe they have found a winning formula with their joint print-and-web solution to retain and grow readership, and not only among younger readers.
Tera has provided a complete media-neutral publishing operation to DNews, including the GN3 editorial system with its Ted  text editing and Fred pagination applications, together with a Tera Site Manager XML handling system and TARK database, that allows MAG to  create once and publish many times.
Because DNews journalists work for both the print publication and the web site, they can use Tera tools to easily choose to put their newspaper article on to the web at any time and can preview what it will look like there. This enables them to adjust the web view in real time, and also to put differing versions on the site, for example a short version on the home page and a longer version elsewhere on the site.

The main newsroom and production server farm is in DNews’s Milan headquarters, where 20 journalists contribute to the paper and to the web site. Another bureau of eight prepares content in Rome. Three staffers in Verona and three in Bergamo work remotely, without a physical newsroom. Though the two main newsrooms in Milan and Rome are connected by a VPN using a 10mbit line, the Tera system allows any journalists working beyond the Milan office to connect to it over the Internet via a Citrix interface to Tera. Thus all cities consider themselves to be in one “virtual newsroom”.

Currently, 250,000 copies of DNews  are distributed each day in Milan and 250,000 in Rome; the remaining 100,000 are distributed between Verona and Bergamo.

The different print editions have some shared content but the large local content is emphasized. Between the 34 journalists, a total of 192 pages per night are produced for the printed DNews, of which around 150 are original to the individual editions.

DNews skips the usual free newspaper approach of doing deals with local transit systems to distribute copies at rail and subway stations and bus or trolley terminals. The new paper is delivered to coffee bar, cafe and bar owners for them to give away when customers are making purchases. In Italy, most workers stop in at a coffee bar for a light breakfast on the way to work and many call in at a neighborhood café or bar for lunch or for drinks before returning home.

A major effort of DNews will be  to bind the newspaper and web site together in readers’ minds and retain their brand loyalty. An important feature will be the “Dialoghi" (Conversation) section in which the journalists and readers can exchange views. Journalists write, asking for comments, in the morning print edition, and readers and others can use the web site to start a dialogue or to raise new subjects.

DNews was set up with Tera's usual speedy install methodology, allowing MAG group a swift path to market for their new product. The system was bought only in December for its February launch.

Tera’s Franz Rossi said: ‘‘The MAG owners told editor-in-chief Antonio Cipriani that their goal was to produce an entirely new kind of publication by capitalizing on the best of both print and the web in reaching its intended audience. But they also needed to produce a quality product at low cost. Tera was chosen as the obvious solution for both these aims.’’.

 Antonio Cipriani said: "I was used to working with Tera's editorial system GN3 in my previous position [at E Polis] and when I was asked about the system I had no doubts: GN3 is extremely flexible and allows me to set exactly the right workflow during all the different steps throughout the four different editions. In this way the central desk and I can control all the production from our computers.

"I was sure that I would find the same simplicity and seamless management using the editorial system to feed our website which is the real challenge for DNews."

The DNews sale and installation was handled through Tera’s exclusive Italian reseller GMDE.

GMDE offers innovative solutions for all applications from newsroom editing to printing process. GMDE has more than 30 years of experience in for printing and newspaper industry technologies. GMDE is a System Integrator and Solution Provider for all the aspects of newspaper with production.
Tera is a worldwide leader in Newspaper Editorial Content Management. More than 300 newspapers on five continents use Tera’s  GN3 editorial content management system to produce their newspapers and web sites. Tera’s Digital Asset Management and Archiving system, Tark, is long-regarded as the premium newspaper archival product.

For more information, contact:
John Juliano,
Tera DP

+1 404.327.6010

Tera Digital Publishing

GMDE