@Beyond the Printed Word: Archant geotagging project delayed 9 months
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 8 November 2007 at 17:50
Tags: Archant, Ifra, World Digital Publishing Conference, geotagging
The planned geotagging-based relaunch at Archant’s stable of regional newspapers will not go ahead for several months, the according the Norwich-based group’s development director.
Archant’s plan for its newspaper sites was first revealed in May, was originally scheduled to launch late this year, but will now probably only go ahead in the middle of 2008, Ian Davies told the World Digital Publishing conference in Dublin.
Davies told Press Gazette the delays were caused by switching to a new content management system supplier.
Under the company’s plans, all 80 of Archant’s newspaper and magazine titles will operate their print and web operations from a central database.
Journalists will add geographical metadata to the online version of the story, allowing users who enter a postcode to personalise the site to focus on events that occur in a radius around their location.
In addition to facilitating this geographical personalisation, the geotagging approach will allow Archant to rapidly develop new, highly-targeted online-only publications for readers who live in areas just beyond its print distribution footprint.
In his presentation, Davies showed a number of news organisations using Google Maps mashups to put their stories in geographical context, including the crime map produced by Sky News and the “Garden Gobbler” heron-tracking map produced by the Grantham Journal in Lincolnshire.
He demonstrated the web site of the Norwegian newspaper Budstikka as an example of an advanced geotagging-based regional newspaper web site. Another site that have similar functionality is the London-based community news site London SE1.
Tags: Archant, Ifra, World Digital Publishing Conference, geotagging
