Tera Digital Publishing S.r.l

Press

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Croatian Daily Goes Live with Tera's GNWeb

MILAN 3-Mar-2009 - Tera Digital Publishing's GNWeb, which allows publishing to the web with a single mouse click, has gone live at Novi List, the 50,000-a-day circulation flagship newspaper of the Novi List d.d. group in Croatia, in the Balkans.

Since the middle of January, GNWeb has been powering a new web portal (http://www.novilist.hr) run by a specially recruited team of young journalists aimed at giving readers in Rijeka, Novi List's home town, and the rest of Croatia, a new source of lively local and international news, and features such as film reviews, weather forecasts, sports, music, technology and video and photo gallery content.

GNWeb's One-Click-to-Web feature instantly publishes any article with the correct graphics, headlines, byline, body copy, metadata and electronic content. This met with demands from Novi List to be able to continuously update fast breaking stories and keep readers returning to the web site to view those updates.

Readers are encouraged to upload their own content for the site, particularly their own videos and photos and comments on the news, making its content a truly shared web experience, something fairly new in the Balkans.

Two engineers and a designer from local Tera reseller NetCom in Zagreb, Croatia's capital, worked with the web portal's in-house team of 10 under editor Karmen Bosnic, to configure GNWeb and create the colorful site, bringing it on line in less than eight weeks from a standing start.

The paper's owners are gambling that the new portal will not only greatly expand the range of news and information for Croatian readers - one day's content recently brought them news from Russia, Hong Kong, England, and the Vatican (also a Tera Customer), as well as economic news from Zagreb, news of the latest activities of pop star Justin Timberlake and a feature on Steve Martin's new Pink Panther movie - but will also lead to increased sales of Novi List's subscription-only electronic e-paper version which is linked to the site.

GNWeb at Novi List is integrated with an existing GN3 editorial system from Tera.

The portal is the first new venture at the paper since Novi List d.d. finished the reequipping of Novi List, plus its group of weekly, bi-weekly and monthly magazines and a books division, with the latest version of GN3 last year.

Novi List d.d. first chose Tera in 1995, and began the company-wide upgrade to GN3 in 2002, working title by title. Significantly, the new system has also been attached to a TARK multimedia archive system, purchased from Tera in 2005, allowing a flexible "create-once-publish-many" paradigm to be introduced across the group.

The decision by Novi List d.d. to maintain and advance its relationship with Tera reinforces Tera's position as the leading publishing systems supplier in Croatia.

With 10 customers across Croatia, Slovenia and Montenegro, Tera is fast becoming the system of choice in the Balkans as publishers in former communist countries of the old Yugoslavia take full advantage of new press freedoms to modernize their operations.

Only two of the 10 staffers on the new portal, most of them in their twenties, were previously on the Novi List staff - editor Karmen Bosnic, in her mid-30s is the oldest member of the team, had previously freelanced for the paper - with the idea of bringing a fresh approach to the web site.

NetCom product manager Carmen Tucic, said young age of the staff had brought a real energy to the creation of the site. "Novi had wanted the portal developed in as little as three weeks, to get it up and running for the start of 2009. We couldn't quite make that, but we think the eight weeks we took has made the portal a great site and a great addition to the Novi List reputation for high quality journalism. The portal was still up and running by January 19."

By using GNWeb, GN3 users on the portal staff will be able publish to the web as easily and seamlessly as publishing to print. And among the features of GNWeb of which Novi List will be able to take advantage are built-in modules for forums, blogs, on-line forms, polling, and geo-mapping, as well as their planned reader contributions.

GNWeb selects only those article GN3 components that are slated for the Novi List portal. When the article is published it appears in the correct section and subsection of the web site, properly formatted and ready for viewing. Other than clicking once, no manual, special or scheduled processing is necessary.

John Juliano, manager of worldwide marketing and reseller relations at Tera Digital Publishing, said, "Tera's article-based content management in GN3 allows the publisher to de?ne an article structure as part of the system's con?guration, rather than through customization. The publisher can specify a presentation destination for each story element. For example, a headline may be marked as being for a particular web site, print title or other channel, or some combination of media. An article can also contain electronic-media items such as audio, video, Flash, polls, metadata, geo-coding and, of course, hyperlinks. Tera's GN3 work?ow is completely media neutral."

So far the new Novi List portal has met with an enthusiastic reception among its target young audience, judging by comments on blogs in Croatia. One reader wrote "when I opened it for the first time, I was stunned." Another added "I'm pleased that they finally went with it." And a third summed up: "I like [it, it is] totally visual!"

About Novi d.d.:
The Novi List Newspaper Publishing Company based at Rijeka, Zvonimirova 20a, Croatia, was established through transformation of the socially-owned NIP Novi List to a share company in accordance with the Law On Transformation Of Social Companies and according to the regulations determined by the Decision On Transformation and Transformation Program of 5 June and 14 December 1992. 400 employees. Titles, Novi List, Feniks, Butica, Smokvin, Zvijezde, Official Gazette of Primorsko-Goranska County, Kvarno info, and Kvarner iz dana u dan. The company's marketing department also helps local businesses develop commercial brochures and special publications.

About NetCom:
Exclusive Tera dealer for Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina & Montenegro and dominant editorial content vendor in the former Yugoslavian market. In Croatia, a Tera system is synonymous with a newspaper editorial content system. In addition to the national news agency Hina, Tera publishing solutions are used at the Vjesnik, the national title based in Zagreb, at the very innovative Novi List, Glas Istre, Glas Slavonije and Zadarski List.

NetCom

Tera Digital Publishing