Memphis Commercial Appeal goes live with Tera Cross-Media editorial system

Agfa upgrades Top 100 daily newspaper to Tera Integrated Editorial and Digital Asset Management System

• Press release
• Mortsel (Belgium)
• March 19, 2005 16:40

Agfa announced today that The Memphis Commercial Appeal, one of the 100 largest newspapers in the U.S. (daily circulation: 175,000; Sunday circulation: 235,000), has installed a 215-workseat GN3 editorial system from Tera Digital Publishing. Agfa, a leading provider of prepress and workflow solutions for newspapers, partners with Tera to distribute and support its digital publishing and archiving products in North America, thus providing newspapers with the most complete production solutions available.

After 27 years of using other systems, The Commercial Appeal decided that a more comprehensive editorial system was needed. Tera's GN3 system provided an integrated editorial and archiving solution, allowing complete editorial creation, copy flow, pagination and automatic archiving of all data - including articles, images and complete pages. The new system gives The Commercial Appeal the most advanced management tools and greater flexibility to control the content of its four zoned daily editions, seven zoned biweekly tab sections and daily Mississippi suburbs edition.

"We needed to expand our production capabilities and we wanted everyone on our staff - including page designers, reporters, editors and prepress operators - to have better tools," said Mike Kerr, newsroom technology manager at The Commercial Appeal.

The installation at The Commercial Appeal; including 215 workstations, remote news bureaus, a newly crafted communications infrastructure, and a complete redesign of the paper; was completed in half of the time that alternative systems require.

"The new Tera system is one important step toward our goal of becoming the best 21st century newspaper of our size in the country," said Chris Peck, editor at The Commercial Appeal. "Our new design and busy copy editors and page design editors have benefited from the new Tera system."

"The Tera system gives newspapers the most sophisticated, fully-featured editorial system at the most attractive price point in the industry. It features scalability from 6-1500 seats to meet the production and budget needs of any size newspaper," said Agfa's Sheila Nysko, business development manager, newspaper business, North America.

"Newspapers throughout North America are calculating the time and cost savings that the GN3 system can bring to them. Its fully integrated editorial and asset management system is unique to the industry, and gives newspapers more efficiency and greater control than ever before," said Anton Andrea Speciale, CEO at Tera Digital Publishing.