The Cole Papers, April 2002: Spring’s sprung | New things - in Hershey, ROI, Bangkok, WebDAV

April 2002, Vol. 13, No. 4

Spring’s sprung -- New things -- in Hershey, ROI, Bangkok, WebDAV -- are flourishing

No doubt about it -- spring came early this year.

Here on California’s Pacific Coast, it was warm, and the sea was blue. Elsewhere in the country it was nice as well. We'd had a short, mild winter.

In the wide, wonderful world of technology, journalism and publishing, we've had an early spring as well.

The winter of our discontent in fact had begun last spring. It was the discontent of a down economy; the discontent of publishers whose sky-high revenues had been snowed under like an icy lake in Minnesota.

That discontent lasted throughout the summer -- let’s not even speak of NEXPO -- and well into fall and winter. In January, the troops attending the Newspaper Association of America’s annual SuperConference in warm, wonderful Phoenix weren't happy, it was clear.

They were blinded by the snows of a recession.

But now it’s April, and our network of contributors has spied a variety of signs that indicate spring may well have sprung. Witness:

At the annual chocolate fest/news technology conference that is America East in Hershey, Pa., Correspondent Steven E. Brier finds signs of a spring in the step of both suppliers and publishers.

Brier chats with some of the exhibitors at America East, reporting that they seem cheery and are bringing out new products in lightweight editorial front-ends (and other tracking systems), systems based on personal digital assistants (PDAs), tearsheets, archives -- even a new editorial front-end. Publishers who spoke about on-line adventures at the concurrent new media conference were actually bandying about the word "profit."

Contributor Rich Pollack gets down and dirty with information systems executives and supplier executives to determine whether there’s any return on investment (ROI) left in systems. ROI is a tried-and-true accounting methodology to assure that capital expenditures actually make fiscal sense. Pollack visits with people who've had to do the ROI dance for years and gives us their insights into how publishers can make the numbers work for them -- even when there isn't a whole composing room to write off anymore.

Contributor Ed Kohorst, who has a newspaper design firm based in Dallas and Hong Kong, visits the most recent IFRA/Asia conference and returns with some observations about how publishers in that region are faring. For one thing, they seem happier than most.

Correspondent Jason Zappe takes us to the place he does best -- inside a complex new technology. Zappe gives us a look at Simple Object Access Protocol (Soap) and WebDAV, two new protocols that bring features normally found in sophisticated workflow systems -- including file locking and check-in, check-out -- to systems based on the ubiquitous HyperText Transport Protocol (Http), the stuff that makes every web site in the world work.

While you might not be interested in Soap or WebDAV for interaction with readers, you certainly might be interested in it for your in-house use.

We wrap up with a news item that came across the wires just as we were going to press -- the New York Times, Boston Globe and their sibling paper, the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette, have signed a deal for a set of editorial systems from CCI Europe Inc. that will total more than 1000 concurrent workstation licenses.

Analysts believe this to be a deal worth $150 million (or more). Even though the award to CCI Europe was expected, the fact that the papers' owner, the New York Times Co., is willing to make so large a capital investment at this time is heartening.

While many publishers are still whining about the after-effects of the advertising downturn of 2001, it’s clear that the Times Co. is taking the opportunity to rebuild its editorial infrastructure.

Perhaps the movement of such a large and prestigious company will help the rest of the industry realize that there is a spring on the other side of the snowbank.

Maybe things really are starting to turn around.

-- David M. Cole, dmc@colepapers.net

From THE COLE PAPERS, April 2002Copyright © 2002, All Rights Reserved.

From THE COLE PAPERS, April 2002
Copyright © 2002, All Rights Reserved.