vjoon K4 Streamlines Production Workflow at Five German Weeklies
Limburg-based medienerleben-Verlag deployed vjoon K4 to create a production platform designed to improve collaboration with its editorial team and Sixeyesmedia GmbH, the publisher's layout and printing services provider. Sixeyesmedia and medienerleben-Verlag now use vjoon's Cross-Media Publishing Platform to produce “Die Zeitung”, a free regional weekly with a circulation of about 350,000 and online editions appearing in associated Internet portals. Energy Net, vjoon's new integration partner, provided technical and workflow consulting, and put the K4 workstations in place in record time. The first test edition rolled off the printing press just four weeks after the publisher placed the order.
Serving the greater Limburg and Koblenz area, “Die Zeitung” appears in five regional editions for the greater area around Limburg/Koblenz in South-Germany. Providing local news and catering to local interests, “Die Zeitung” is an interactive newspaper that maintains a spirited dialog with its readership. Its editors encourage readers to post news and views on topics of interests on the Internet portal and submit articles for publication in the paper.
Workflow improvement
“With the help of K4, we are able to collaborate with the newspaper's editorial team in much faster and simpler ways,” says Bernd Hendler, general manager and technical director at Sixeyesmedia. The editors draw up the page plan, do the background research, and write the articles at Limburg and Koblenz, while Sixeyesmedia's people prepare layouts and ads at their location in Schlüchtern. A virtual private network (VPN) links up remote sites, enabling editors to write and format articles on the actual pages using Adobe InDesign or Adobe InCopy, and track the production's progress in K4 Overview. Sixeyesmedia also provides repro- and lithography services, and manages ads right up to the final formatted page.
The media service provider had combed the market for a suitable workflow solution. “We opted for K4 because it handles intuitively and easily,” says Hendler. Another reason why K4 won the bid was that it saves the agency so much time. “What's more, we felt that the integration partner Energy Net was giving us sound advice,” Hendler says. The Web-based K4 Overview serves to monitor the production statuses for both layouts and articles.
