Cox Newspapers Inc. will
deploy Caspio Inc.’s database building software across its 17 daily papers.
The move comes after a
two-year evaluation of the software at flagship Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
All of Cox Newspapers’
editorial teams now have access to the Caspio Bridge service to publish their
various databases. Caspio Bridge’s multi-user administrative interface can
manage access privileges so that each paper only views its own data and
applications.
“Our entire newspaper group
has been monitoring the success of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in creating
interactive Web database applications with Caspio Bridge,” said Sue Cleere,
special projects manager at CoxNet, the strategic and operational online group
for Cox Newspapers’ shared print and online activities.
The Journal-Constitution has
been using Caspio Bridge to publish databases on the Web and create Web database
applications. Other papers to roll out the app include the Austin (Texas)
American-Statesman, Dayton (Ohio) Daily News and Palm Beach (Fla.) Post.
Caspio’s Director of Marketing
Valaine Anderson said that the ajc.com Web site often requires at least two
distinct Web database applications per month, some at a moment’s notice.
“One example was during
Hurricane Katrina when ajc.com, within 20 minutes, posted an application to help
people find loved ones,” she said.
Anderson said newspaper
customers most commonly use the database applications for publishing and
managing local community information.
“An online editor can import
data into Caspio Bridge and use its wizards to create a Web application
interface for displaying, sorting and searching the data online,” she said.
Some examples of its use
include sports scores, election results, school test scores and housing
statistics.
While financial terms for the
deal were not announced, Caspio said the fees for using the Caspio Bridge
service are based on the number of database applications. Fees start at $40 per
month for up to five Web applications and scale up appropriately.