Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Best Practice Cases
In addition to Canoe.ca, Quebecor Media maintains separate Web sites for all of its
newspapers. Other sites include ClassifiedExtra (integrated classified ads from all
Quebecor Media properties), HomesExtra, Autonet.ca, and the French language social
networking site Espace Canoe (espacecanoe.ca). All of Quebecor Media Interactive’s
Web sites are part of the Canoe network, which currently generates a total of 9 million
unique visitors per month.
Quebecor Media’s online strategy is to get consumers to engage more with the news
content and with journalists — to get discussion and thoughts going among readers and
editorial staff. Print media products contain many promotions of Web sites and Web
content, in order to draw traffic to the Web site and strengthen bonds with subscribers.
While online, users can provide comments and opinions, which journalists can take
back to their newspapers to guide further reporting.
Meanwhile, editorial people get engaged with users online through blogs or on Espace
Canoe, a French-language space for interaction among editorial staff and consumers.
Patrick Lauzon, EVP of Product Development, Sales, and Marketing of Quebecor Media
Interactive, had several objectives for implementing a new content management
system. First among these was the need that he saw to consolidate the company’s 12
different content management systems, which include some developed in-house and
other off-the-shelf products whose vendors had gone out of business. They wanted to
optimize expertise on a single system as much as possible.
Other business objectives of installing a new content management system included
search engine optimization (SEO), the need to improve their properties’ search engine
result rankings. Lauzon also wanted to improve integration of Web publishing with the
print editorial workflow — to eliminate as much as possible of the manual copying-and-
pasting between print and Web environments, and therefore to free up more staff time
for Web site redesigns and development of more original Web content. Quebecor Media
is also looking to develop a central repository that will enable the company’s different
Web sites to find and use each other’s content.
Quebecor Media selected Nstein’s Web Content Management framework for several
reasons: Nstein’s focus on print as well as online media, their text mining tools, their
vision, and their client and partner lists. The vendor’s dual-language skills and location
in Montreal were also assets.
The first site that Quebecor Media is deploying with Nstein is the
Toronto Sun (www.torontosun.ca), which is the company’s largest
newspaper. The Toronto Sun Web site is being developed to the
same look and feel as Canoe.ca. Content comes from the Sun’s print
editorial environment; it will also include a blog platform for blogs by Sun journalists as
well as external bloggers.
Part of the Sun’s online strategy is to increase the use of video. The paper is equipping
its newsroom with video cameras. They are integrating a video player with Nstein’s
Web content management capabilities and using FeedRoom to store and serve up
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