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CText accepted in Chicago -- 7 years laterIf, as the old saw goes, you shouldn't put the cart before the horse, maybe the Chicago Tribune shouldn't have put the system before the horsepower. In late December, after almost seven years of development, the Tribune accepted the Dateline editorial front-end system developed by CText Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich. Eventually the Trib will have more than 450 Dateline workstations. Installation and training at the 691,000-circulation morning daily began in early January. Tribune executives expect to have all workstations installed by March, and plan to shut off the paper's elderly Hendrix Edit 5 system in late summer. Envisioned in the late '80s as one of the first true client/server editorial systems, CText and the Tribune began working on Dateline together with some relatively untried technologies -- the OS/2 operating system and local area networks. "It took so long because several pieces of the system had to mature," said Dean Gerdes, the paper's director of operation services. The Trib wanted to resolve three basic issues before it would accept the system, Gerdes said: response time, functionality and stability. Response time was measured against the Hendrix Edit 5, which because of its proprietary nature was one of the fastest editorial systems ever made. "We have gone through two upgrades of our Tandem processors," said Gerdes, to get the kind of response time needed by Tribune editors. The installed Tandem technology -- the new Himalaya RISC system -- includes 10 processors, as well as 10 gigabytes of mirrored high-speed disk drives linked to those processors. The response times were computed in a 5 megabyte Lotus spreadsheet built by Gerdes. "It modeled not individuals," said Gerdes, "but jobs." The spreadsheet averages out the functions performed by a slot editor over the course of a complete shift; some functions perform faster on Edit 5, some on Dateline. As for functionality, CText's Jeff Litvak said the company hadn't "added a new feature in a few years." Gerdes said that in early 1993, missing functionality included a macro recorder and a table editor, but "we went into fall '93 watching those pieces come together." The last issue was stability. Much of the problem there stemmed from OS/2, CText's chosen operating system. OS/2 was conceived as a joint project between IBM and Microsoft, with the goal of making it the next generation of MS-DOS. When Microsoft elected to extend its Windows technology in the early '90s, IBM was left to finish the system -- and firms like CText were left in the lurch. Over time, IBM did come through with improvements to make OS/2 viable. The goal of the stability tests, Litvak said, "was to get an average user through a week's worth of work without having to reboot more than once." Network stability proved to be an issue as well. "Early on, we couldn't keep the network up," said Gerdes. Networking is important in the Tribune installation because the Tandem CPUs reside at Freedom Center, the paper's production facility, which is about 1 miles from the newsroom downtown. The issue was resolved "about three months ago," Gerdes said, when the paper switched to Novell IPX networking. Lastly, Gerdes pointed out that '386 PCs weren't sufficiently powerful to run the suite of applications Dateline requires -- XyWrite, CText's Tomahawk composition engine and Hawkeye, the WYSIWYG composition preview window. "We couldn't goose the '386 machines to do the client work," Gerdes said. The paper settled on 33- and 66-MHz Compaq '486 PCs, which come with 20-inch VGA monitors and 20 megabytes of RAM. How did CText and the Tribune work out all these complex issues? "In June 1994 we started a test lab here at the paper," said Gerdes. Both the paper and the supplier had full-time engineers in the lab, and IBM contributed with OS/2 debugging tools and consulting expertise for the operating system through its Issc subsidiary. Gerdes characterized the work as "an intense effort" to make the applications work together, and along with the operating system. How is the newsroom handling the prospect of moving to a new editorial system? "We'll see when it goes live," said Tribune Systems Editor Paul Dix, who has been with the project since its inception. "For the majority of users," said Dix, "the old Edit 5 system isn't broke. And for them, if it ain't broke, then there's nothing wrong with the system." The Tribune hasn't lost an edition on Edit 5 "since the early days," Dix said, but "how long that could continue, I don't know." Newsroom people are being provided a minimum of eight hours of training in two sessions, one for OS/2 and one for CText. Four more hours are given to those who must understand composition (Tribune executives geared Tomahawk to emulate Edit 5's typesetting commands). "As a general rule," said Dix, "following their first class, their new machine is sitting on their desk." Dix sounds skeptical about CText Dateline, but he attributes that to the cynicism in his journalist's blood. "When have you known editorial people to say anything except, 'If your grandmother says she loves you, check it out?'" -- dmc
Digital '95 focuses on World-Wide WebOur favorite newspaper technology conference, the Digital meetings put on by the National Press Photographers Association, convenes March 1-4 in San Francisco. The theme of this year's conference is preparing for a smooth ride on the information superhighway. Main sessions include:
Breakout sessions will include on-line newspapers, photo editing, dial-up AP Preserver, systems editors, how digital imaging fits into the career of a free-lancer, image management, calibration and multimedia. Cost for attending the conference for NPPA members is $175; non-members pay $200. Registration information is available from the Planners Network, (513) 728-4671; fax (513) 728-4672, e-mail: planners@plink.geis.com or World-Wide Web at http://sunsite.unc.edu/nppa/dig95.html. -- dmc Bit bucket ...Gannett gait: When John Bryan left the Cincinnati Enquirer to go to the Los Angeles Times (see The Cole Papers, January 1995), an opening was created at the Gannett paper. Charles Brewer, the longtime systems editor at the News Journal in Wilmington, Del., was promptly dispatched to Ohio to handle the Enquirer's newsroom systems. That, of course, left an opening at the News Journal. Another Gannett editor, Jeff Beebe of the North Hills News Record in Warrendale, Pa., just outside Pittsburgh, was sent down to Wilmington to handle the computers there. No word yet as to who will fill Beebe's role in Warrendale. ... Association assimilations: At the Newspaper Association of America, Paul Luthringer has been named director of public relations; he replaces Nancy Jones, who left the association but will free-lance for its Presstime magazine while going to graduate school. Luthringer had been in public relations with MCI, and before that was associate director of media affairs for the Bush White House (previously he was a reporter and editor for newspapers in Florida). ... Also at the NAA, Christine John has been named director of federation services (the group has six marketing federations: display, circulation, classified, co-op, market development, promotion and research); she'd been the organization's director of conference program development and had been a staff writer on the International Newspaper Advertising and Marketing Executive's Newspaper Marketing magazine. ... At the American Press Institute of Reston, Va., Evelyn Hsu has joined the staff as an associate director. Hsu is a former editor and reporter at the Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle, and is a former national president of the Asian American Journalists Association. ... And at the Interactive Services Association of Silver Spring, Md., Eugene Quinn of Tribune Interactive Network Services (Chicago Online, etc.), has been elected chairman of the ISA's board of directors. ... Real bits: At the Boston Globe, Lincoln Millstein has been named managing editor of new media; he'd been the paper's features editor. ... At Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services in Washington, Wendy Govier, longtime graphics guru for both the newspaper and television sides of the house, leaves for a job as managing editor of a new digital magazine on the World-Wide Web, published by Silicon Graphics of Mountain View, Calif. ... At the Hartford Courant in Connecticut, Mark Kurtich has been named vice president of operations and customer services; he'd previously been veep of operations. ... Vendor vibrations: Advanced Technical Solutions Inc. of North Andover, Mass., has two new hires. Allen Emery, formerly of Atex, has joined the company as a pagination and system support specialist, and Herbert Castorf has joined the company as customer support manager for Europe (Castorf had been with Atex in Germany until 1993). ... At Monotype Systems Inc. of Rolling Meadows, Ill., John Lally, vice president of sales, has been named to the company's board of directors. ... Company news: In its first U.S. editorial pagination contract, CCI Europe Inc. of Marietta, Ga., has announced it has sold a system to Phoenix Newspapers Inc. (Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette). The system will replace an aging pagination system installed by Information International Inc. of Los Angeles in 1985. ... Managing Editor Software Inc. of Jenkintown, Pa., has announced an investment by Adobe Ventures L.P. and Hambrecht & Quist Group. Adobe Ventures is a venture capital partnership between Adobe Systems Inc. and the venture capital firm Hambrecht & Quist. No comment was made on the amount of the investment, but Managing Editor officials said it was a "minority" investment and that the founders and current management team would continue to run the company. ... Confabs: The tenth annual Intermedia conference (called, surprisingly, Intermedia '95) will be held Feb. 7-9 in San Francisco; topics will include multimedia and CD-ROM. For more information, call (203) 840-5634. ... The first IFRA/NAA conference, "Learning from Each Other," will be held Feb. 21-24 in Orlando, Fla. IFRA, the European newspaper research association, and NAA, the Newspaper Association of America, promise discussions on the changing world labor force, the quest for quality, international standards and the future of newsprint. For the international perspective, call Dave Beck at (703) 648-1315. ... High Tech Direct 2000, a conference on technology marketing, will be Feb. 27-March 1 in Santa Clara, Calif. Speakers include Peter Friedman of eWorld. For more info, call (800) 808-3976. ... A seminar on the digital distribution of advertising will be held March 5-8 in San Diego; call (212) 620-2328. ... Documation '95, the meeting of the document management industry, is March 7-9 in Long Beach, Calif. Call (805) 639-2280. ... The Southern Newspaper Publishers Association's annual meeting is March 12-14 in Houston; for the details, call (404) 256-0444. ... The Chicago version of Folio's magazine conference and trade show is March 13-16; contact Folio magazine at (203) 358-9900 for info. ... And lastly, the sixth annual conference on computer-assisted reporting, co-sponsored by the National Institute for Advanced Reporting and the Society of Professional Journalists, will be held March 17-19 in Indianapolis. Among the highlights: hands-on training with nine-track, AskSam, SPSS for Windows, Paradox, Internet surfing -- and that guy Cole will be speaking again; call James Brown at (317) 274-2773 for more information. ... # From THE COLE PAPERS, February 1995, Copyright © 1995, All Rights Reserved. |
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