Roxen for print production; Creative Circle for digital

Creative Circle & Roxen team up

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Creative Circle and Roxen have integrated their platforms to supply a feature-rich, innovative and cost-effective editorial publishing system for print and digital operations.

"The newspaper industry has needed a better CMS option for a long time," says Bill Ostendorf, president and founder of Creative Circle Media Solutions and a consultant to hundreds of media companies on three continents. "The result of this integration is a truly web-based, feature-rich editorial production system combined with an innovative, user-oriented web platform. This allows seamless publishing to all print and digital channels.

"We've seen every system out there and advised many media companies on technology vendors," said Ostendorf. "The problem is that mainframe, all-in-one platforms are too expensive and have cookie-cutter, poorly-designed websites. Meanwhile, web vendors who try to create print 'production systems' don't provide anything with the sophistication and ease of use of Roxen's solution."

Roxen's editorial software was initially developed for the world's largest global newspaper, Metro, with which publishes local editions on four continents. The Roxen Editorial Portal is ideal for targeted toward small- to mid-sized newspapers requiring efficient editorial processes, full production overview, efficient content and asset management as well as publishing to multiple channels simultaneously.

"In the market for editorial systems we are unique in that we are native to the web, and we have relentlessly refused to inherit the complexity of traditional news media production systems. The Roxen Editorial Portal provides a lean, integrated web-based solution for intake, production and distribution of content in all relevant channels, and it integrates seamlessly with other tools for content management, advertising and reader interaction", says Per Östlund, CEO of Roxen.

"Now, no newspaper will have to settle for an inadequate web portal or 'print production lite.' They can have industry-leading, fully integrated print and web platforms that allow for simultaneous publishing across existing and future channels," says Ostendorf.

This is a partnership between Creative Circle and Roxen to integrate their technologies into a more complete, leaner, more sophisticated whole.

"It's very difficult for any company to be good at everything, but we know our clients are looking for single-source, all-in-one solutions to simplify operations. Our goal was to take the best from both of our companies and integrate everything as well or better than if we were a single entity," says Ostendorf.

The Roxen Editorial Portal can be deployed in a mere couple of weeks and requires no investment in hardware. It offers a comprehensive real-time overview of the entire production process across multiple channels or platforms. Roxen's goal is to take the complexity and cost out the editorial process allowing publishers to focus on their content, business and profitability.

Meanwhile, Creative Circle's mediasiteQ platform is very content- and user centric. The platform has a wealth of features not available from any other vendor, including an integrated and flexible pay wall, native content options, self-service advertising, well-designed user interfaces and lots of different ways to display stories and visuals. The Creative Circle team has strived to do a better job of telling stories and packaging content online, often using print design tactics that work just as well online. "Stories need to be told in different ways and related stories need to be packaged together better online," says Ostendorf. "In the end, you don't want to just publish stories online, we need to engage users online as well as a good designer can in print."

The companies' development teams have worked together to provide a seamless integration between systems. An editor can assign stories to a position on the website, create a web headline, change the URL, add keywords and make the story live on Creative Circle's web platforms from inside Roxen's print production CMS. Meanwhile, web content can be easily reverse-published back to print.

"We know from our work on the projects like TribLocal at the Chicago Tribune that publishing content in print that was submitted online by users can significantly drive up web activity," says Ostendorf. In addition to its web CMS software and hosting, Creative Circle can provide strategic consulting, re-energizing training, print redesigns that can grow readership, creative outsourcing and a host of innovative new revenue concepts to boost print and digital income. "Between our two companies, we provide an impressive lineup of essential services," said Ostendorf.

Creative Circle Media Solutions, Roxen, Ostendorf