Journal Register Co. publishes 18 newspapers using free online software

Posted by Clara Martínez Turco on July 5, 2010 at 3:51 PM

As the news publishing industry continues to try and figure out a viable economic model to replace print revenues, the Journal Register Company believes the future of journalism and the print industry lies in community crowdsourcing and the usage of free publishing tools available on the Internet.

To prove it, the American media company produced on Sunday the print editions of its 18 dailies and their website content using only free web-based sofwares such as Picasa, Gimp and Scribus, Editor & Publisher reported.

Photo: John Paton

This achievement was a "declaration of independence" from proprietary publishing systems and "the old way of thinking" as journalists use social media websites to get story ideas and Google Docs and Scribus to write the news, CEO John Paton said in a press release.

The publication of the 18 dailies was the last step in the company's Ben Franklin Project, launched in April to prove that newspapers can be produced at lower costs by using free tools. The initiative also aimed to open the newspaper-making process to readers so they could be a part of the news-gathering stage.

However, Journal Register's Vice President of Content Jon Cooper wrote in a post published on the project's blog that the success of the initiative did not mean newsrooms are going to start working only with free tools.

"But if an operation - part Journal Register or an outside company - wanted to, they could. The tools we discovered, trained on and used as part of the Ben Franklin Project could allow a news organization to throw away their old methods and start anew."

The Journal Register Company's dailies include The New Haven Register (Connecticut), Oakland Press (Michigan) and The News Herald (Ohio).