Check this morning’s paper for some jet engines attached.

As Erie Times News Managing Editor Pat Howard wrote in his Sunday column, “Daily deadlines won’t wait for high-tech learning curve,” about half of today’s (Tuesday 9/23/2008) paper was created with a new Content Management System, which allows the reporters, photographers, and editors to fully manage the work flow of their stories from words and pictures in their heads to ink and graphics on the pages you read in your PJ’s or on the bus.

Mr. Howard confirmed with The Press and Tower that the new CMS is the NewsSpeed Editorial/Pagination Suite by Digital Technology International out of Utah. According to DTI’s website:

A newspaper’s most valuable assets are information and the ability of writers, editors, and advertisers to tailor that information to suit the needs of its readers. DTI’s NewsSpeed Editorial/Pagination Suite helps you unify your data so this valuable information is not locked into a format that is designed for one purpose–to put news on paper.

In reading the software’s promotional page, what’s cool about this software is that it uses common and open programming language and data handling (XML and SQL for the so-inclined) and has the functionality of Adobe InCopy and InDesign embedded into the system. Our readers who are graphic designers or communications officers at their companies (like me) use InDesign every day of the week. All of this allows our friends at the paper to use highly user-friendly tools to quickly and efficiently crank out tons of content every day to all of their output streams: newsprint, online, and wherever else.

All of this talk about software reminds me of my initial exposure to automation at the first radio station I worked at: WJET 1400. Back in 1983 our automation was a switch between each of the five tape cart decks that when turned “on,” would start the next deck when the first deck heard the “End of Message” tone. You could actually play three commercials, a jingle and your first song out of the stop set with no hands! Impressive, huh!

When I worked at Classy 100 a few years later, the AM had the “Music of Your Life” on big reel-to-reels and those cart carousels in an automation system that had to have cost six figures (similar system at right). Later, when I bought WCTL’s first all-digital system, Scott Studios, we went from one of the hardest stations in the market to work at, to one of the easiest. Now, at the touch of a screen, we had instant access to every song, commercial, and jingle in the library. I’ve found that with every technology upgrade, there is a huge learning curve and a new and sometimes difficult way of doing things, but usually after the bugs work out, you get totally hooked on the new system.

Maybe you’ve had a bout with Ignite, ParkerVision or BE AudioVault. Even though I’m sure the folks at the ETN are having a blast with their new system, anyone want to share their automation or technology “horror stories”?