In an effort to boost the number of regional supplements it now publishes, Italian daily Rizzoli Corriere della Sera (daily, 868,266) signed a multi-year management services contract with Unisys Corp.

RCS will use the Unisys’ News Content Manager-Hermes application for news production and pagination, News Gathering Manager for wire management and Media Asset Manager to archive published articles. All of the applications and associated hardware will reside at Unisys’ computer center in Milan, Italy, which already serves a number of other Italian publications.

RCS said the rollout would permit geographically dispersed editorial teams to access a central system and thus expand the number of regional supplements it now produces.

The first regional section, aimed at Veneto in northeast Italy, will go into live production this month. Over the next three years, the daily will launch supplements for eight other regions. More than 200 users will access the Unisys system to produce some 200 local pages each day once the system is fully deployed, RCS said.

Meanwhile, Unisys said it completed installation projects at two other European sites.

Italian press agency Agenzia Giornalistica Italia is using Unisys‚ News Gathering Manager to make its editing and approval process more efficient. Unisys meshed the application with AGI’s existing story distribution system. This allows 150 AGI journalists at 17 bureaus in Italy and Belgium to use a single application to search and edit incoming stories. A companion workflow system classifies stories and alerts editors when they are approved.

France’s Le Monde (daily, 500,000) installed News Content Manager-Hermes and News Gathering Manager.

The paper said the new applications have let it compress its production schedule, allowing the afternoon daily to have copies at Parisian newsstands by noon.

News Content Manager-Hermes, News Gathering Manager and Media Asset Manager are based upon an Oracle database foundation.