Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Best Practice Cases
an editor wants to use it. The contract numbers are included as PDF annotations; a
custom-designed interface lets users pick the correct contract number from the
company’s ERP system according to the source of the content.
The Nstein system also has a facility for quickly creating large feeds of content to
aggregators. In the past, about half a dozen of the company’s titles had XML feeds to
Lexis-Nexis, NewsBank, Factiva, and other aggregators; these were hand-coded and not
very consistent. Now, there is an automated tool, so that a person at a certain magazine
can simply select which articles to syndicate and where to send them; the tool creates a
file in PRISM format with consistent tags to be sent.
LPG also implemented Nstein’s text mining feature during the initial seven-month
development period. Rodriguez had modest expectations for the text mining
functionality, because it was based on the IPTC (news industry standard) keyword
taxonomy that Nstein supplies “out of the box.” The IPTC taxonomy is only about 1,000
keywords in size, which is far too small to be useful for the specific fields of interest that
LPG’s magazines cover. One of LPG’s future tasks with Nstein is to build an extension
of the IPTC taxonomy that meets LPG's needs better.
LPG expects that the text mining functionality will create more and better keywords,
which will lead to better search results — not only for consumers searching the Internet
but also for professionals searching Lexis-Nexis and other aggregators.
The Nstein system went live at Large Publishing Group in October 2007. They rolled it
out initially to four magazine titles, including one of the company’s flagships which
owns many historical images — a total of about 375 users. LPG intends to roll the
system out to the rest of the company imminently.
LPG developed its own user interface to Nstein rather than use the one Nstein supplies
out of the box; it chose a more neutral color palette in order to be less obtrusive to
photo editors using the system. The user interface is also designed to segregate different
asset types (articles, photos, etc.) into their own tabbed areas and to keep search and
other features simple enough for novices.
As for training: LPG will hand out quick reference cards and hold a few introductory
meetings during its rollout, but Rodriguez believes that the system is so easy to use that
no extensive classroom training will be necessary, and the company’s editorial
librarians will be available to address questions of keywords and other metadata
Reader’s Digest Association
Reader’s Digest Association (RDA) is another publisher that is
implementing Nstein’s content management and text mining
technology initially for internal use. Reader’s Digest is a storied name
in American publishing that dates back to 1922 and has become a
global brand; its flagship magazine is now available in 21 languages and
more than 60 countries around the world. In addition, Reader's Digest
publishes other best-selling titles, including Taste of Home, Every Day
with Rachael Ray, Family Handyman, and international titles such as Joy (Mexico), as
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