In search of a suitable new editorial system for their content and production operations, The Printers Mysore have chosen ppi’s Content-X, which is already in use at large media companies across the world. The Printers Mysore is the first Indian publisher to purchase and install the complete suite of the Content-X multi-channel editorial and publishing system although eight other Indian dailies use ppi’s Classic production systems for ad booking, page planning and production.
The Printers Mysore decided in favour of Content-X owing to its distinct multi-channel functionality and the extremely positive experience of leading news publishers. “We sent our technical professionals to the ‘Bangkok Post’ to evaluate the ppiMedia editorial system, which we expect will help us automate and update our digital media channels,” says KN Tilak Kumar, joint managing director of The Printers Mysore. Also critical for the group was that Content-X supports media processing and production in English as well as Indian languages and scripts, such as Kannada
The Content-X, editorial system stores content in the digital asset management system in a medianeutral format which can be played out in digital and print, covering the full range of publishing channels. The Printers Mysore is implementing Content-X as the most important component and tool of their editorial workflow.
In the first stage of the Content-X implementation, which has started in January 2017 and is likely to take several months, journalists and editors of the group will use the new editorial and workflow systems to produce the daily editions of Deccan Herald and Prajavani as well as two magazines—Sudha and Mayura. Gradually, the new system will be used to publish and continuously update both the print and new media channels. Kumar adds, “We look forward to our cooperation with ppi Media and to implementing Content-X. We are confident that this promising system will enable us to maintain focus on our journalistic core competencies.”
Essentially, the ppi Context-X system at the Deccan Herald group sits on top of Digital Collection’s digital asset management system, which can store and retrieve assets such as text, images, audio and video. The group plans to create variants and updates on the fly for channels including RSS feeds, social media such as Twitter, blogs, web as well as its print pages. The idea is that with the requisite set of preferences, structures, guidelines and workflow in place, updates in several channels can take place automatically and simultaneously. For instance, an update to a print story can also automatically broadcast a new tweet announcing the update in an appropriate way.
Critical for the Printers Mysore group was that ppi Media’s Content-X supports media processing and production in English as well as Indian languages and scripts, such as Kannada. Also, that all the components of the solutions come from a single source.
Bengaluru-headquartered The Printers (Mysore) Pvt. Ltd. is one of the country’s leading media companies, publishing one of India’s top ten English-language newspapers, The Deccan Herald, and also one of the leading Kannada dailies, Prajavani. Karnataka has a population of 66 million and a literacy rate of 75%, including the high tech and cosmopolitan city of Bengaluru with a population of almost 10 million.
Prajavani has a daily circulation of 527,300 copies and is printed in 7 locations, with 32 zonal split editions across Karnataka (Audit Bureau of Circulation – Jan-Jun 2016). Deccan Herald, with a daily circulation of 286,540 copies, is largely focused in Bengaluru city (ABC – Jan-Jun 2016). In addition, the group publishes two Kannada magazines, including Sudha, a weekly lifestyle magazine and Mayura, a monthly literary review also to be produced using Content-X. Sudha has a circulation of 75,000 copies, while Mayura circulates 25,000 copies per month.
The ppi Media Content-X project implementation at The Printers Mysore began in January 2017, and the first phase is likely to take about four months with the multichannel and new media workflow and outputs to follow. Dr. Hauke Berndt, ppi Media’s chief operating officer, says about the cooperation with Printers Mysore, “I am particularly pleased that The Printers Mysore will publish dailies and magazines with Content-X in the future. India and its numerous vernacular languages, each with its own non-Roman script, poses a special challenge to any editorial system and we are more than equal to meet these challenges with Content-X.”
ppi Media, based in Hamburg, Germany, is a workflow software solutions specialist for newspaper and magazine publishers, as well as printers, corporate publishers, groups and SMEs. A market leader in automated newspaper production, 80% of all dailies in Germany are produced by ppi Media software as are many more in Asia, Europe, Africa and the USA.
