Through its relationship with the Washington Post’s Arc XP, small Swedish developer Roxen has gained an entry to the Lenfest-owned Philadelphia Inquirer, regarded as one of the world’s most advanced news publishers.

The Swedish company has been working with Arc Publishing – which changed its name to Arc XP last year – for almost five years, with product vice president Matthew Monahan saying seamless print production is an area in which Roxen excels.

At the Inquirer, it will modernise production through its Roxen Editorial Portal print module. Chief technology and product officer Matt Boggie says the module will help them “create a better product quickly and simply”, leading to more creative presentations of news and a far more efficient process.

“Our primary priority was choosing a proven solution that fits into our systems and workflow,” he said.

Roxen’s Per Östlund says his small company is “totally focused on being the perfect supplier” when it comes to print production tools.

“Print is still of fundamental importance to a great deal of media companies around the world,” he says. “The Philadelphia Inquirer is absolutely our most demanding partner so far, but we love demanding clients. We are in the technology business, and we solve problems – the more challenging, the better.”

The portal is used at almost 100 newspapers in Scandinavia, Europe, Latin America, Australasia and the US, but the Philadelphia Inquirer becomes its largest client so far

Boggie says Roxen will greatly simplify the basic placement, copy editing, and adjustments that occur every single day. “The vast majority of our print placements are straightforward, so simplifying that main path of workflow was a critical success factor for the project.

“But the seamless integration with Adobe InDesign lets our team create complex layouts and beautiful presentations without needing to resort to an alternate workflow for special projects”, he says.

The Lenfest Institute – owned by the Philadelphia Foundation – was established in 2016 by cable television entrepreneur Gerry Lenfest, two years before his death in 2018.