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Mediasurface's Clever Solution for Smart Newspapers

British Web content management provider Mediasurface have announced the integration of their Morello Web CMS solution with WoodWing’s Smart Newspapers system.

The result is calculated to provide newspaper publishers, particularly, with an enterprise-wide solution to the industry-specific challenges of enabling content management across off-line and on-line channels using a single user interface.

The new deal works like this: WoodWing’s ‘Smart’ suite delivers features (like plug-ins to Adobe InDesign and InCopy) which enable structured off-line support and integration to processes as diverse as content planning, gathering, editing and publishing.

Morello then delivers Web CMS functionality to these processes, offering instant online publication of content to online multiple channels and websites. All this is achieved from within WoodWing’s editorial environment.

If Mediasurface do achieve adequate integration of offline and online CM processes for newspapers, this new development will be welcomed in editorial offices across the world.

Most solutions in the field to date have relied on ad-hoc import/export methods to enable this kind of online-offline integration. But Mediasurface believe that their product, allied with Smart, offers a whole new level of usability, and brings advanced Web features to the table like RSS, forum support, and more.

Erik Schut, President of Dutch company WoodWing Software, had this to say: “…we are now able to offer the newspaper industry a real solution to consolidate their content creation needs and help them solve a problem that has been bothering them for years.”

Mediasurface have been having an up-and-down sort of year. They moved to acquire fellow CMS provider Immediacy in July (for around £5.6m), a move which was welcomed by shareholders (Mediasurface are a London (AIM) listed public company). But earlier this month they posted disappointing financial results: losses of £1.3m ($2.5m) on revenues of just over £11m.

The company is based in Newbury, and their flagship Morello product powers content for the likes of NATO and Citigroup.