A single-database editorial system has provided the means for APN to centralise editorial production of its 14 daily newspapers in regional Australia, writes Peter Coleman
A central sub-editing unit using a system based on a common database is ‘drought-proofing’ editorial production of APN Australian Publishing’s 14 daily newspapers and creating new opportunities for excellence and expansion.
Since last March, a team centred on Maroochydore on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast – but including sub-editors working at their original offices and at home – has taken on nine dailies, 27 non-daily newspapers and their associated property and TV guides, with the balance to follow by mid-year.
It’s not a new idea, but one in which APN has been a pioneer, both as an early adopter of AAP Pagemasters’ ‘page ready’ TV, stockmarket and racing services, and four years ago with outsourced sub-editing of its New Zealand newspapers.
In Australia, group executive editor Peter Owen (pictured) says the needs and motivation have been “a little bit different” for the very decentralised regional group: “We’ve always had problems attracting and retaining good sub-editors to some of the more remote areas,” he says.
Not so on the Sunshine Coast however, where the new ‘Centro’ operation adds work challenges to an already enviable lifestyle.
Owen (60) speaks partly from experience: He’s spent 20 years there, five in his present role and 15 as editor of the ‘Sunshine Coast Daily’, which he joined from APN’s ‘Queensland Times’ in Ipswich after stints in Melbourne, the UK and Hong Kong.
And he has just recruited a former Adelaide ‘Advertiser’ chief sub who, “can’t get over the fact that he can get up in the morning and go surfing”. While APN’s regional titles have previously been an incubator or transit point for ambitious journalists, only two have dropped out since the 60-strong team was established.
“By any measure of industry churn, that’s remarkable and very encouraging,” he says.
“Part of the beauty of Centro is that publications will never be threatened by the fact that there is nobody to put them out.”
Month-by-month, dailies in Mackay, Rockhampton, Gladstone, Bundaberg, Gympie, Sunshine Coast, Ipswich, Warwick and Tweed have been brought into the scheme. Centro occupies offices to which Sunshine Coast Newspapers moved in 1994, although the Goss presses relocated there have since been replaced by APN’s new Yandina print centre nearby (see page 16).
Where possible, sub-editors have been lured to Maroochydore, with incentives including a relocation allowance of up to $15,000, but some – including ‘back benchers’ who check and coordinate content – log in from their original offices or from home. Owen says of the ten previously in Rockhampton, about half are still there – “but potentially working for a range of titles” – and just over a dozen sub-editors remain in Mackay, Gladstone, Bundaberg, Gympie and Tweed Heads.
At least as many sold up and moved to Maroochydore, the preferred option. “With people working together in a team operation, it works as efficiently, productively and enjoyably as possible,” he says.
Owen says it is part of APN’s philosophy to centralise that which can be centralised: “The strength of our operation – in many ways, our entire franchise – is in local content, and we want to provide the resources to do that as well as we can.
“Anything that’s not local, we are going to try and centralise, as we have with classified, centralised prepress, the presses themselves, and now editorial.”
Identifying its resources – there were 105.3 ‘full time equivalent’ subs – the group made the “quite bold” commitment that no-one would lose their job, and has also underwritten costs to individual newspaper centres where they may have been lower.
“This was never a cost-cutting exercise – we were only ever looking to save a handful of FTEs – just to improve what we did,” he says, “but it will be a much more secure operation, and our newspapers will be much better produced than before.”
Technology comes from CCI Europe’s NewsDesk system, which includes Layout Champ page design. Installed in February 2005, it brought the benefit – “and it really is a big benefit,” Owen says – of a single database: “It’s just as practicable for someone to log in in Airlie Beach and sub a publication in Lismore, as it is for that job to be done in the Lismore office.”
The system was introduced without specific thoughts of the Centro project, but Owen says newspapers often make the mistake – “as we had in previous years” – of trying to make new technology fit existing work patterns. “It’s better to stand back and see what the technology allows, and to take advantages from it.”
The browser-based NewsDesk system allows various levels of access, and all members of the Centro team are nominally assigned to a desk. It might be a group of daily newspapers, or group of community newspapers, sport, or property products, “but if a newspaper is getting close to deadline, in an instant we can move people across. Say we’re doing ‘Range News’, and we need to clear 15 pages in half an hour, we can do that”.
Editors remain entirely responsible for story selection, subs stay with their original titles – at least until promoted – and in addition to this imported local knowledge, a proofreading system has Centro’s work checked by two pairs of eyes before it is returned to the client site. “That adds a level that most of the sites didn’t previously have,” Owen says. “When you’re producing just on 2000 pages a week with 50 people, there are going to be mistakes, but I think the checks and balances we have in place are at least reasonable.”
There’s a pragmatic attitude to the services provided: Owen says Centro handles all the layout for some sites, while some do all their own, but an opportunity remains to leverage the economies of scale to say, headline writing, with two or three specialists.
Whether all layout is eventually centralised will be a decision for the editors: “If they see the quality is better here, they will approach me to do more. We have probably four people here who are predominantly designers, but we will evolve to meet the need.”
And when the rollout is completed, “hopefully mid year”, Centro will start value-adding to the group, with a design centre, available to do product redesigns, introduction of new sections, front pages, pointers, magazine fronts, straps, and so on. “I reckon as the editors become more confident with the idea of outsourcing, which effectively this is, they will give us more.”
The route ahead also includes more efficient handling of multimedia – perhaps with an upgrade to CCI’s NewsGate – and the production of copy for features on lifestyle and travel, and topics such as state and federal budgets.
Beyond all this, there has been another ambition: “If we could set up a sub-editing force here, we could genuinely turn it into a centre of excellence,” he says, “focussing on training, giving people the time and resources, and the opportunity to really hone their skills.”
“Some of our sites suffered in the past, and the worst result for those 30-40 papers we’re putting together now is that they are only as good as they were before. Simply because the people who are involved in their production are better skilled, can focus on what they are doing, and are better trained and qualified.”
(From GXpress Magazine, March 2010)