CN Group Chooses Polopoly for Local News

Swedish content management vendor Polopoly has been selected as the supplier of the new content management platform for the Cumbria-based publishers CN Group. CN Group, which publishes seven local newspapers including The Cumberland News, News & Star and North West Evening Mail, is confident that Polopoly holds the key to increasing the online audience of its titles.

Stuart Cooke, CN Group Digital Development Director, says: “One of the reasons Polopoly was selected is that the system is already proven to reliably deliver stable services at far higher traffic levels than we currently experience. This will remove the traffic bottlenecks our customers experience when accessing our sites at peak times."

Cooke continues: “Polopoly will also put the online publishing tools in the hands of our editorial teams rather than editors having to refer to IT or New Media every time a small change is required to a page. The Polopoly system will also make it easier to edit and manage the sites and share content, such as sports results, between titles. It will be used by CN Group to provide localized editions of newspapers websites.”

Other features will include instant user metrics, improved communication with readers, and web 2.0 features such as tagging of articles and comments on articles. The first website to be re-launched will be the Times & Star, to be followed by rest of the CN Group titles.

CN Group's Publishing Division is responsible for the Group's newspaper publishing and associated activities in Cumbria, Northumberland, northern Lancashire and Scotland. The main publishing centers are based at Carlisle, Barrow-in-Furness and Hexham, with other offices in the principal towns of the region. The Division publishes two daily evening newspapers, five paid-for weeklies, and a range of free newspapers, directories, magazines and niche publications. It also has a thriving new media business, and each of the papers has their own website.