Posted by tom.camp on November 29, 2007 at 9:25pm
I have currently been pulled into developing a site for a local newspaper that uses Mediaspan software to publish their paper. I am a developer, not a newspaper person, so I am not familiar with this particular application. Does anyone else use this, and if so, is there an easy way to export articles out of it into a Drupal site?
Also, is the Classified module worthy?
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
:)
Comments
When in doubt, go downhill.
Oops, got distracted and hit submit again. :(
When in doubt, go downhill.
Mediaspan
My condolences, Tom!
Actually, how easy it is depends on the version the paper is using. Older versions don't have a true database but with a module they sell called Transporter make it feasible to parse the articles into some form of XML -- headline, byline, brief (first paragraph, for example), body. The newest version runs over MySQL and allows validation of fields, so a lazy editor can't send you an article without a headline, or more likely, news category (Local, Sports, Food), or most likely -- with the slug they use in the editing process ("Joe's story", or today's "Cop Notes" only, and no headline, or the slug in the place of the headline, etc. If you want to talk to someone who has lived through this (with an old version), send me an email to modza@sfnewmexican.com, and I'll put you in touch with our developer.
Michael
Michael Odza
Digital Media Manager
SantaFeNewMexican.com (free)
eNewMexican.com (by subscription)
NewMexicanVirtualTours.com
office: 505-995-3822; cell: 470-4917; fax: 984-1785
The Santa Fe New Mexican
202 E. Marcy St., Santa Fe, NM
Michael
Michael Odza
Digital Media Manager
SantaFeNewMexican.com (free)
eNewMexican.com (by subscription)
NewMexicanVirtualTours.com
office: 505-995-3822; cell: 470-4917; fax: 984-1785
The Santa Fe New Mexican
202 E. Marcy St., Santa Fe, NM
oops, forgot to answer you about Mediaspan Classifieds
What's the word I'm searching for? It's on the tip of my tongue..Ah, got it. The answer to your question, is Mediaspan Classifieds (online, I'm assuming you mean) worthy, is...
no.
Michael
Michael Odza
Digital Media Manager
SantaFeNewMexican.com (free)
eNewMexican.com (by subscription)
NewMexicanVirtualTours.com
office: 505-995-3822; cell: 470-4917; fax: 984-1785
The Santa Fe New Mexican
202 E. Marcy St., Santa Fe, NM
Michael
Michael Odza
Digital Media Manager
SantaFeNewMexican.com (free)
eNewMexican.com (by subscription)
NewMexicanVirtualTours.com
office: 505-995-3822; cell: 470-4917; fax: 984-1785
The Santa Fe New Mexican
202 E. Marcy St., Santa Fe, NM
Workflow
Heh...
It also may depend on the workflow. I don't touch Mediaspan myself, but I know that at some of our smaller papers, final edits may get done in the page layout software, separately from the newsroom CMS, so stripping content from Quark or InDesign becomes the critical step.
Ick.
InDesign content
Stripping content from InDesign is exactly what my client needs to do for her newspaper site... any suggestions on how to do that? Or is ick the bottom line?
We use MediaSpan (used to be Baseview)
We use it for editorial only - we switched our classifieds system to DTI in 2004, but we're still nursing our Baseview NewsEditPro IQue system along.
We're on version 3.something... The ability to export from the system is pretty limited. There's an "HTML Export" plugin, and it can export delimted files to some extent, but it's largely dependent on the copy desk setting things up properly on their pages.
We ended up creating an intermediate application that takes in raw text files from the NewsEdit database, allows the copy editors to make edits and package text with photos, and spits out XML files that are automatically exported to our CMS (a proprietary McClatchy app, not drupal). But it ought to be possible to create a bulk import module to suit your needs.
There is another option I'm aware of that some of our other papers use, that exports XML from Quark pages (I don't know if it works with Indesign), by using a GUI to group together and identify pieces of content. I'll have to ask around about it and post it back to the list.
-chris
--
Chris Yates
Interactive Director
The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette
Transporter
Transporter can be tweaked to export text from NewsEditPro IQue in a variety of ways (like adding header fields for the author, publication date, etc.) You can then script taking those text files and adding them to a Drupal database.
The plug-in for your page layout program (such as DragX for Quark), can be configured to save any edits they do on their page back to the story in the NewsEdit database so that the exported story will be the edited version.
Having the proper headline, byline, publication date, etc. is dependent on the writer/editor giving that info. Granted, we're a few years old on our version (running the pre-SQL one) so things might have improved.
Depending on the volume of stories that need to get posted, you might get better results having the editors manually post the stories from their finished pages rather than trying to automate the process and take into account any variances in how the data might export (missing a headline, wrong publication date, etc.).