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Feb.
2006
NewsStand
512.334.5100
www.newsstand.com
Olive
Software
408.200.1780
www.olivesoftware.com
TownNews.com
800.293.9576
www.townnews.com
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E-edition
app vendors tweak products to meet changing reader demands
By
Hays Goodman
Associate Editor
As
newsprint, ink and distribution costs continue to rise, publishers are casting a
watchful eye on alternatives to ink-on-paper editions.
It’s
always a delicate balancing act running extensive and exclusive Internet content
while holding onto traditional print subscribers, and so-called “electronic
editions” or “e-editions” attempt to straddle the line between the two.
Typically, an e-edition offers a 100 percent digital replica of the print
edition, delivered through use of an Internet Web browser, and can allow for
zoning. Inserts, however, are usually not included, and their absence can
sometimes decrease the perceived value of the product in the eyes of the
consumer.
Two
powerhouses
Two
powerhouses dominate the e-edition provider space, joined by a number of smaller
players. The two largest vendors in terms of newspapers and magazines are Olive
Software and NewsStand Inc.
Many
of the smaller vendors rely on apps that involve some adaptation or outright use
of Adobe’s Acrobat Reader software to display the e-edition pages. Both Olive
and Newsstand, however, have developed sophisticated software that speeds the
display of an electronic newspaper and allows the individual expansion of single
articles. That’s in contrast to Reader-based apps, which usually only allow
page-based zooming or other global-level operations.
NewsStand
Founded
in 1999, Austin, Texas-based NewsStand has sold its digital edition software
since 2001. The company has more than 240 customers, of which 70 percent are
newspapers. The two biggest, in terms of circulation, are USA Today and The New
York Times, which owns a piece of the company.
NewsStand
consumers can choose between two apps to read the digital replicas. NewsStand
Reader is a standalone app that resides on a user’s computer and can be
configured to automatically download digital editions for later viewing.
NewsStand’s
iBrowse software displays a newspaper in a Web browser, a recent addition to the
company’s standalone reader app.
Graphic: NewsStand
It’s
a feature particularly attractive to commuters who use laptops on buses and
trains, said Chief Marketing Officer Michele Chaboudy.
Last
year, NewsStand added a second app, iBrowse, which is a Web-only viewer that
functions using an Adobe/Macromedia Flash plug-in.
Newspapers,
Chaboudy said, are using e-editions in a variety of ways, with no common
strategy emerging thus far.
“Some
are simply using it to find a new market and extend their reach,” she said.
“Internationally, for people who have moved away from their region, for people
who are getting it in the mail, and for young people who are on the Web all the
time.”
NewsStand
is currently working on further integrating a publisher’s traditional Web site
into the e-edition by developing a feature called iSite. According to Chaboudy,
the app will allow the placement of a direct e-edition link on a Web page.
Subscribers will then be able to access the story link at that point.
NewsStand
also supports a Web portal that lets users buy e-editions directly on its site.
Olive
Software
Olive
Software, a multinational company that splits its operations between the United
States and Israel, has 475 customers worldwide and just over 300 U.S. customers
split between newspapers and magazines. To date, The Washington Post and
Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., are two of its largest daily newspaper clients, and
it recently signed the Chicago Sun-Times to a distribution agreement. At press
time, that project was in its final testing phase and the Sun-Times planned to
begin taking online subscriptions for the ActivePaper Daily editions in this
month, according to Chris Kelly, Olive’s vice president of sales.
The
Olive Software ActivePaper Daily version of The Washington Post as it appears in
a Web browser.
Graphic: Olive Software
Like
NewsStand, Olive begins the electronic conversion process by taking a copy of
RIP-ready PDF files from production software, along with a page manifest
describing sections and number of pages. If more detail is desired on
advertising locations on the page (which can create a searchable advertiser
database), then an advertising manifest must accompany each edition as well,
which describes the X-Y coordinates of each ad on the page and supplies
additional metadata about each ad.
Although
NewsStand operates entirely as an application service provider, handling
conversion and processing at its Texas headquarters, Olive clients can either
administer the software themselves or contract with Olive to manage the app.
Olive
also makes it possible for newspapers to split up the conversion geographically.
Papers adopting this workflow can choose to have Olive remotely host the Web app
and the daily process of breaking up the pages (dubbed “segmenting” by
Olive) is performed automatically for a pre-determined per-page fee.
Alternatively,
users can buy a software license that permits them to perform the hosting and
segmentation internally.
According
to Kelly, some clients choose to have the segmenting done remotely by Olive, and
then the finished XML-packaged files are delivered back to the newspaper to be
hosted on local servers.
“We
find that a lot of our customers like to start out with the outsourced version,
because it lets them try the service without investing a lot in capital
equipment or software,” Kelly said. “Some of them switch to the licensed
software later on because it turns out to be more economical in the long run and
it gives them even greater control.”
Kelly
confirmed that the Sun-Times will be using Olive’s outsourced method of
production and hosting when the service launches. In that option, technicians in
Israel will perform the daily segmentation of files.
Segmenting
versus lifting: What’s the difference?
NewsStand Inc. and Olive Software both require publishers to output a
copy of their print-ready production files, which typically means PDFs.
NewsStand
functions solely as an application service provider and Olive now offers
that as an option, which means that the files are transmitted to a
remote site for processing, and ultimately Web hosting as well.
“We
took a little different approach than Olive,” said Billy Taylor, chief
technology officer and co-founder of NewsStand. “They tend to prefer
putting a picture of a page up on the screen and letting you step
through it an article at a time. We wanted to put [up] a copy of the
broadsheet and let you navigate and consume it the way you would an
ordinary print product.
“Olive
takes the broadsheet and chops it up into articles. We take the
publisher’s PDF files and ‘lift’ all objects off of the page and
metaphorically place them in a bucket,” he said.
Taylor
said NewsStand has invested seven or eight years into technology to
compress, optimize and refine the visual characteristics of those
objects.
“We
take something that the printing press sees and reduce it into a very
small footprint that retains every bit of the visual quality of the
print product,” he said.
According
to Taylor, the company’s older reader software uses technology
licensed from Adobe to interface with the original PDF files, but it
does not directly display them. The nature of that product also allows a
publisher to more precisely control digital rights management (DRM), by
selecting whether to allow an issue’s articles to be printed or copied
by making one or two selections in a master administrative screen,
rather than having to employ separate DRM software.
Both
NewsStand and Olive leave it up to their customers to decide how they
want to restrict customer access to e-edition content. Typically, a
newspaper will write a small, front-end authentication app that checks
the electronic sub against an existing circ database before passing the
server housing the e-edition an authentication OK.
That
lets users access that day’s edition and back issues if they have been
authorized to do so.
-Hays
Goodman
TownNews’
low-cost
app
attracts looks
TownNews,
which hosts hundreds of Web sites for smaller dailies and weeklies, is
also exploring electronic editions. Its software produces an end product
that is not broken apart or segmented, but presents an
indexed-by-section view in Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is similar to e-tearsheet
products produced by other companies, and in fact the app performs that
double function, according to Marc Wilson, TownNews’ chief executive
officer and general manager.
“Our
customers use it in all sorts of ways,” Wilson said. “Some combine
with print subscriptions, some offer online only subs. The newsrooms
like the archive features. We’ve had papers switch to our product
because while it is very functional and versatile, it is by far the
lowest cost product on the market.”
Although
the Lee Enterprises unit focuses its efforts on smaller papers, large
newspapers, including The (San Francisco) Examiner and The (Washington,
D.C.) Examiner also use the company’s electronic edition software.
-Hays
Goodman
A
sampling of electronic editions
Below
is information from the Audit Bureau of Circulations on what a sampling
of newspapers are reporting for their paid electronic edition numbers.
Information, obtained from the papers’ publisher’s statements, is
the latest available from the accessabc.com Web site.
*The
New York Times: 4,896 (Monday-Friday)
*The
Washington Post: 1,460 (Monday-Friday)
*The
Star Ledger, Newark, N.J.: 479 (Monday-Friday)
*USA
Today: 1,327 (Monday-Thursday)
*The
Boston Globe: 435 (Monday-Friday)
*The
Tampa (Fla.) Tribune: 113 (Monday-Saturday)
*The
(Oklahoma City) Oklahoman: 501 (Monday-Saturday)
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Editor’s
note: Conley Media Group, parent company of Newspapers & Technology, uses
Olive Software’s ActivePaper Daily software at one of its daily newspapers.
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