Choosing a single advertising system to be used
across the board by a group of newspapers is not a decision to be taken lightly.
But it’s a decision already made by Midlands
Newspapers, according to Mike Charleston, information technology director.
Midlands, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Omaha
(Neb.) World-Herald Co.. is in the process of deploying Advanced Publishing
Technology’s ACT Order Entry software at all its newspapers but one.
Midlands, headquartered in Papillion, Neb., a
suburb of Omaha, has three dailies in Nebraska, three dailies in Iowa and a
number of weeklies in both states. Midlands’ dailies are the Scottsbluff Star
Herald, the Kearney Hub and the North Platte Telegraph in Nebraska, and the
Council Bluffs Nonpareil, the Shenandoah Valley News and the Ames Tribune in
Iowa.
Latest to install
The Council Bluffs newspaper is the latest
newspaper to install ACT Order Entry. That install was completed at the
beginning of the year. The North Platte Telegraph, the Scottsbluff Star and the
Shenandoah Valley News are also using the software. The Ames Tribune, however,
is in the midst of installing an advertising system from Publishing Business
Systems. The wheels were already in motion for the PBS install when Midlands
acquired that newspaper and the Tribune plans to stay with that software,
Charleston said.
ACT Order Entry’s display ad interface
features dynamic pricing, position specification and multi-publication
functionality. Ad section, category and scheduling are controlled via an
extensible and customizable user interface.
Graphic: Advanced Publishing Technology
Midlands Newspapers uses APT’s ACT Classified
in Kearney, Scottsbluff, North Platte and at one of its suburban Omaha weeklies.
Midlands also uses APT’s ACT Editorial application in Scottsbluff, North
Platte, Kearney and Ames.
“Almost all of the other newspapers will be on
the ACT (Order Entry) system at the end of this year,” said Charleston. “And
all of them except Council Bluffs are using the classified application.”
Operations integrated
The ACT Order Entry module of APT’s suite works
in conjunction with the accounts receivable module.
“Generally, the orders are entered — some of
the newspapers have the account reps enter the orders and some of them have the
business office enter the orders — off of a paper form or entry form,”
Charleston explained.
From that point the system passes orders either
to production or the creative services/press side, Charleston said.
“The graphics applications system manages all
the graphics and elements in a database so you can pull them off of a palette
and drop them into an ad.”
Once the ad is built, an order number references
all the ad’s elements. Classified ad order entry, meanwhile, mirrors the text
field used to order display ads, ensuring consistency and cutting input errors,
Charleston said.
“You have different rating options obviously,
but the calendar for placing the orders is the same and the look and feel is the
same,” he said.
Central oversight
Charleston oversees all of the installs of the
APT software, as well as the PBS installation at the paper in Ames.
“I’m in an advise and recommend capacity and
the way that Midlands is structured is that each company has independent
management so those decisions are ultimately up to the individual company as
well as senior management (the Omaha World-Herald Co.),” he explained. “(The
newspapers) usually come to me with a need and tell me the business reasons they
want to do something or tell me that their current system doesn’t do
something. I work with them to see what vendors are out there.”
In this case, Midlands had prior experience with
APT’s systems because APT applications had already been installed at many of
its sites.
The first paper to convert to APT was the Kearney
Hub in 1996 with classified and editorial modules.
“The Kearney paper was looking to replace,
believe it or not, an old Microtek Mini, which they had held onto for awhile,”
Charleston said. “They kind of slowly stepped into the PC revolution and once
they did they took a big step.”
The old system at the Kearney Hub handled
editorial and classified advertising, so the newspaper needed something to
replace it and wanted a PC-based system.
“At that point, APT was just kind of emerging
as a market leader in PC-based front-end systems,” Charleston said. “So we
were a fairly early adopter of APT.”
The timeframe
Charleston said Midlands plans to have the APT
Order Entry module implemented throughout the group by mid-year and up and
running by the end of the year.
“We haven’t finalized our implementation
plans but tentatively we’re looking at trying to be done by mid-year.”
APT’s allegiance to open standards is a key
benefit, Charleston said.
“We can make decisions really independently of
them; they’re not dictating exactly what it is. They don’t care what we get
as long as it meets their minimum requirements, which is nice in our situation
as a newspaper group,” Charleston said. “We can control our own destiny as
far as failover and recovery and on the back end everything is ours to maintain
and oversee.”
