France’s leading magazine for the agricultural sector unifies its print and digital operations with EidosMedia’s digital publishing platform.
Published by Groupe France Agricole (GFA), La France Agricole is the leading source of news and information for France’s agricultural sector. As well as the weekly print edition, subscribers can access the magazine’s content through its digital editions for Web and mobile, in addition to an e-paper edition. The online editions include constantly updated access to the latest prices for a range of agricultural commodities and detailed local weather forecasts.
The move to Méthode has unified the print and digital workflows in the newsroom: journalists write a single, channel-neutral article which is adapted to both print and digital publication. The digital edition uses a ‘responsive design’ approach with pages that adapt to any screen size, eliminating the need to create separate editions for mobile devices.
Gérard Julien, La France Agricole's General Manager said: “This adoption of Méthode has greatly simplified the task of serving the contents to our readers through a range of different channels and devices.”
For its digital editions, the journal makes use of Méthode's dedicated Web CMS, the Portal Server. This allows close personalization of content on the basis of user profiles: in this case it is used to build detailed local weather forecasts using meteorological data imported from external sources. For agricultural users such detailed forecasts are an important basis for planning and decision-making.
Part of La France Agricole’s news content is contributed by correspondents outside the newsroom. These external users will be integrated into the newsroom operation using Swing, the Web-based interface for the Méthode platform. Swing allows external correspondents to take part in the newsroom workflow from any location with a network connection.
The GFA project was unusual in that all editions, print, digital and e-paper, were rolled out simultaneously. By using standardized solutions and best practices, the project was completed in just a few months using minimal resources. “This was a very ‘lean’ deployment,” said Emmanuel Pérès, Professional Services Director. “It is a good example of how Méthode can deliver excellent value even in medium-sized publishing operations.”
The Méthode installation serves about 100 users in La France Agricole's Paris newsroom and around 20 external correspondents in the field.
Following the launch of La France Agricole the next phase of the project will see the transfer to Méthode of the other nine agricultural journals in the GFA portfolio.
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