La Stampa, Italy’s fourth largest Italian daily newspaper, holds a central position in the Italian publishing scene because of its commitment to national and international information, while maintaining a focus on local news through its national network of newsrooms. La Stampa uses the Atex content management system, which was installed over 12 years ago, as its central newsroom editorial and production tool. With the addition of text mining, La Stampa provides a new set of research offerings for journalists and editors, whilst enabling new business opportunities across all publishing channels.
Text mining allows the La Stampa editorial teams to organize the large quantities of information coming into the news desk on a continuous basis. The news content is categorized and linked to related content with minimal effort from newsroom staff, to help enhance searchability and thereby increase the value to journalists, editors and La Stampa readers.
IT Director, Fausto Graniero said, “The addition of text mining provides a new classification process that lets us organize and tag information automatically as it arrives in the newsroom on a daily basis. Once the data is tagged, the process of classifying and mining changes radically. Like human language, text mining can automatically generate innovative patterns to classify content, but also provides new ways to browse information for any publishing channel.”
Text mining replaces manual content classification, with computer-assisted processes, delivering improvements in data organization and presentation of content to the reader. Any content stored in the Atex system is classified according to agreed patterns that are recognized in each document.
When searching documents, text mining considers the semantic relevance of the search string and returns related content, not simply a representation of an object’s recurrence, as you would find in a web search engine.
“For publishers like La Stampa, this system represents an innovative way to reduce production costs and to set up new content based sales channels,” said Gian Camillo Vezzoli, Chief Operating Officer of Atex’s Southern Region. “Journalists can create new content in an automatic and dynamic way, based on contextual presentation of information according to the actual meaning of the search keys. Moreover, by increasing the amount of data available to on-line readers, and presenting related content based on search, media companies are realizing considerable increases in visitors and page-views per visit.”
Mr. Vezzoli continues, “Text mining technologies fully support Atex’s strategy for the media industry, enabling them to improve productivity whilst delivering opportunities for revenue growth. Text mining transforms simple search into knowledge management, which is important to media companies who are handling huge quantities of information, and are looking to maximize the value of that content internally and increase revenue potential online through contextual advertising placement and page-views per visit.”
About Atex
Atex says: “Atex is a leading provider of software solutions and services to the global media industry. With a 35-year history of continuous innovation and commitment to quality, Atex has created the largest digital advertising and editorial content management and multimedia software delivery capability in the world. The company has nearly $1 billion USD worth of software installed worldwide and supports in excess of 800 customers in more than 40 countries, directly and via its established managed services offering. In addition to its significant R&D investment, Atex partners with world-leading complementary solutions providers to enhance integration and Web services development. Providing professional, long-term support through a global network of strategically located regional offices, Atex is headquartered in Reading, UK.”
