For example, Anonymous@8:14 p.m. wrote yesterday: "Centralized pagination is in the works, though don't know when. Too many editorial systems to consolidate right now, and they're finding the cost a little higher than expected in terms of putting in new systems. CCI is the likely vendor of choice. Some local editing would be maintained, but they've got software that's supposed to know who the mayor of say, Westchester is when the pagination and copy editing is being done in Wilmington, or something like that."During my time, we used CCI at USA Today to write and edit our stories, often thousands of miles away. In the San Francisco Bureau, for example, we edited stories so they'd fit to exact line lengths the allocated space on pages. Although copyeditors wrote the headlines, I believe we could have done that, too, effectively paginating from the West Coast.
Now, here's what I want to know, though: How is this talk of pagination different than the editorial hub systems that were started last year? The most recent hub was created for three Tennessee papers in late January.
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[Image: today's Jackson Sun, where page production has been centralized for three Tennessee papers]
"Centralized pagination" sounds to me like a bunch of people (probably in India, huh?) whose job it is to bang out pages.
ReplyDeleteHub systems are X number of newspapers sharing the same system/database. It's easy to keep Indianapolis and Cincinnati and Des Moines walled off, and people can work remotely. The designers would tap into that system.
Newest versions of CCI make this possible.
But you discard the controls local production has always held in the name of time and efficency. You lay off costly page designers in the cities affected and ship off the work to the Punjab.
And to think, in Cincinnati, a punjab was the usual slug for a story on front section jump page.
No real difference between the centralized pagination and the pagination hubs. The bottom line is jobs will be eliminated at some sites, possibly added at a few others, but an overall reduction in staffing for the savings.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous inadvertently pointed out a problem that could mean more mistakes in papers if the hubs go too far afield. Westchester doesn't have a mayor; it's a county. Not having basic knowledge that a local copy desk has will be disastrous.
ReplyDeleteNah, it's not disastrous. The expectation from the public is that we don't give a shit about the product, we're biased and lazy and we can't spel so gud.
ReplyDeleteOnce we start screwing up even more, we will be exceeding expectations of our customers - and they told us in MBA skool that exceeding expectations is the key to enormous profits.