Daink Jagran A case study on NewsWrap
Background
- The largest Hindi language newspaper of India with 29 printing units spread across 8 states of India.
- Circulation of over 2.5 million copies a day.
- Each printing unit prints multiple editions and 'split runs' to provide local content to the readers.
- Over 200 editions printed daily consisting of over 3000 pages.
- The content, both text and photos come from many different inputs like reporters, bureau offices, wire services, Internet and emails from free lancers, stringers and contributors
Pre implementation scenario
- Bureau news used to be sent from 250 bureau offices all over the country and abroad. Though there was a method to the madness chaos would often prevail due to lack of a workflow and hierarchy.
- Wire feeds were either printed and then distributed or stories were picked manually from folders on the PC where the wire feed arrives. This would often result in the many people working on the same story or stories getting missed. There were delays involved in the process of the story print reaching the sub editor after the story had arrived, these delays could be as much as 45 minutes or more.
- No provision to view bureau and wire stories in one browser to see which stories can be merged or how many need to be selected for the next issue.
- Stories from the reporters would also be placed on individual PCs in folders at the City desk. This would often result in stories getting lost, folders getting renamed or deleted.
- Articles would also get lost if the files used to get corrupted, as there was no backup.
- Pictures that were to be published along with stories had to be tracked manually.
- The sub editor would have to sit with the page maker to format the story. No provision to indicate or define the format, style or crossers.
- No concept of digital library and archives for quick referral and story retrieval.
- Pages were made in Quark XPress from RTF files. This was time consuming.
- Often duplicate stories would get placed in the same page or edition.
- Stories that were 'continued' on a continuation page would often have half the story missing.
- The deadlines for sending stories and pages were not respected and often all the stories would be transferred from one center to another in one go and not in a staggered manner resulting in network jams.
- No system of sending stories to the other centers except for transferring files and folders over the WAN.
- Bureau offices would send content over email and fax, often had to be typed again at the printing center.
- Reporters would come to the office to file stories.
Post Implementation
- Workflow on based on user rights and privileges.
- NewsWrap™ has a wire server, a bureau server, a smart spider™ and an email extractor. These do the following:
- Ensure all stories are automatically forwarded to the right person as defined in the workflow.
- No story is missed
- Multiple takes of the same story are made known to the users.
- Emails are automatically extracted, the font converted on the fly if required and then taken into the NewsWrap™ workflow
- Stories are picked up automatically by the Smart Spider™ from predefined websites and sections. These stories are then taken into the workflow. Sub editors do not need to refer to the websites over and over again leading to saving of time and bandwidth.
- Stories can be viewed in one browser - the NewsWrap™ story assigner.
- No need to visit various websites
- Stories from a variety of sources can be merged using the NewsWrap editor
- All stories are sent to the desk incharge of the section of the newspaper for whom the story is meant for. The desk in charge can then assign a story to any of the sub editors in his team. The sub editor would work on the story and then submit it to the desk editor for approval. The desk in charge could then either pass the story on to the Quark Xpress page, edit it, re-assign it to another sub editor or send it back to the same sub editor with his comments on how to improve the story.
- Pictures can now be attached with the story and form a part of the workflow
- The story can be edited and formatted in the NW editor. The sub editor can now suggest the blurb (crosser), headline size, number of columns, etc. and get a WYSWIG preview of the story as it would appear in Quark XPress
- Detailed audit trails and version tracking has brought about accountability and the performance of each user can be analyzed
- 4C-DAMS the user friendly archive and digital asset management system allows sub editors to do more in-depth analysis based on previous stories. 4C-DAMS is web based so has been deployed from a central server
- Communication module sends stories and pages to other editions seamlessly in a completely automatic manner. The user just has to select a check box in a list.
- Page making is through Quark Xpress Xtensions developed by 4Cplus that help speed up the process of pagination by automating page making to a large extent.
- Checks on the Quark page to ensure that there is no duplication of story or text within a story is not being repeated again.
- Checks that make spell checks mandatory before the page is released
- Xtensions ensure that all stories that are meant to be continued on another page are present.
- Optimal use of resources across the organization as duplication of work is removed
Reporters can now file stories over the Internet using the Internet version of NewsWrap that allows access to the newsroom over the web anytime.
- Management and senior editors can see the status of pages over the Internet using the Newswrap Internet based page preview.
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