Multi-channel publishing: one click, and you're done!

[ayshakhatun3113]

The core editorial product of publishers is increasingly consumed via different channels, each with its own specific requirements and possibilities in terms of presentation, availability, information content and timeliness. To do this, many publishers use different IT systems, maintain several editorial offices and employ increasingly complex editorial processes. The costs of all this are enormous. In addition, the number of subscribers to print media is decreasing and the costs of paper, energy and delivery are increasing. Young target groups are also not adequately reached. In addition, hybrid IT architectures must be protected against increasing attacks on business-critical infrastructures.

Wouldn't it make sense for publishers to be able to serve print, online and mobile channels with a single system? What advantages in terms of cost, efficiency and operational security could publishers gain?

The publisher earlier!
In the past, publishers followed a linear workflow that resulted in the printed newspaper. Editors had to create articles with a specified number of characters so that the people doing the layout could design the facebook data columns and pages in the page planning for the traditional newspaper before it was printed. Publishers used classic print editorial systems for this. News portals on the web were filled by separate online editorial teams using content management systems. In the worst case, the classic e-paper products - such as the print newspaper in PDF format - were made available for download via another system. Finally, mobile apps were filled via another system.

All content, regardless of the publication channel, had to be secured using archive systems, with the entire process often being operated via heterogeneous infrastructure landscapes. The entire system landscape became extremely complex when it was not just a single publisher, but a media group with a large number of media houses and different publishing products. Systems quickly accumulated in double-digit amounts, for which maintenance and license fees were due. The infrastructure costs - both for self-operated systems and for external service providers - not only increased the operating costs, but controlling the security aspects across distributed systems also created a higher risk.

The publisher today!
There is a lot of talk in publishing houses about artificial intelligence (AI), large language models (LLM) and ChatGPT. Anticipatory advertising and article recommendation are intended to retain customer groups or to develop new ones.

But what is actually the core and therefore the basis of the publishing house? Where does the heart of every publishing house beat? In the editorial department, where the editorial staff produces the journalistic product anew every day. Of course, topics such as AI, machine learning and metadata generation are important for the future of publishing houses, but it is at least as important to create a future-oriented working environment for the "heart" of the publishing house. The working environment must optimally support the editor in his/her daily work, but also give media houses answers to questions about increasing efficiency, reducing costs and increasing operational reliability.

For this reason, multi-channel publishing systems are being used more and more frequently. The historically grown system landscape with the editorial systems that are isolated from each other is thus consolidated on a platform in order to be able to centrally coordinate the control and delivery of websites and the newspaper production process, including app filling. Multi-channel publishing systems offer a flexible architecture and are modular in design in order to create media-neutral content. Another advantage is the central data storage of such media-neutral content. The individual content can not only be played out in different media, but publishers can also exchange topics and content across the board and edit them collaboratively if necessary. This means that it is not just about the one-sided output of content, but also about bidirectional (import and export) options. Multi-channel publishing systems cover all publishing processes such as topic planning, article management, page planning, agency imports, image databases as well as archive and fee systems. At the push of a button, the editorial staff only decides individually for each article whether and in what order the channels are supplied.