Global newsrooms stay connected with Swing
As home-working becomes a necessity, Eidosmedia’s remote working apps are keeping news operations running smoothly from North America and Europe to Asia-Pacific.
“We’ve never had such demand for our Swing mobile working apps,” said Massimo Barsotti, Eidosmedia CMO. “Customers who are already using them in a limited way now want them rolled out to all staff. Those that aren’t, want to start immediately.”
Originally developed to allow roving reporters and free-lancers to file stories and media from outside the newsroom, the Swing application has acquired a richer feature set over the years to the point where it now offers a workspace comparable to a dedicated newsroom workstation.
“For some time now, Swing has given authors and editors outside the office a valid alternative to their office machines,” said Massimo, “Not only in terms of story creation and media handling but also providing access to a full set of resources from legacy archives to agency newsfeeds and online image banks.”
“But the events of the last month have presented our mobile apps with their greatest challenge,” said Massimo. “Entire newsrooms have been moved to remote working while continuing to deliver the same print and digital news products to their readers.”
This was the case with the titles of News Corp Australia. Titles from the Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and other Australian dailies are now being produced from ‘lounge rooms, studies and dining tables’ across the country in an operation which involved the rapid extension of Swing to the whole of NCA’s nationwide staff.
On the other side of the world in Montreal, Canada, the country’s leading French language daily Le Devoir was able to declare itself ‘an entirely home-made news medium’ with both print and digital editions being produced by staff working from home, following fast-tracking of the new Eidosmedia publishing platform.
In Europe too, demand for rapid Swing deployments has boomed in France and Belgium, while in Hong Kong and Australia, other Eidosmedia customers are rapidly expanding the user base for mobile access.
“There was already a tendency for news-media customers to move their operations to our mobile apps,” said Massimo. “The public health crisis has accelerated this, and we’re very happy to see that these products can support the intensive use that current circumstances demand.”