Swiss media group Tamedia has started moving its German-language titles to EidosMedia's Méthode platform, starting with the daily BZ Berner Zeitung.
One of the country's leading daily newspapers, BZ is published in five regional print editions and provides shared pages for other titles in the group's Swiss portfolio and for external partners.
Tamedia has been using Méthode to produce print editions of its French-language newspapers and magazines for some years. The Berne daily - with its content archives - is the first of its German-language titles to be transferred to the new platform.
"This is the first step in a process that will bring the Berner Zeitung and the Tamedia titles the Berner Zeitung is collaborating with onto a common production platform and central archive," says editor-in-chief Peter Jost. "We expect to facilitate exchanges and collaboration between the titles, especially in the area of content-sharing, because our titles already share common pages of national and international news."
Tamedia publishes nearly a dozen German-language titles in Switzerland, ranging from dailies BZ Berner Zeitung and Zürichsee-Zeitung to local advertising and listings papers. Méthode's edition-management functions will introduce substantial flexibility into the sharing of content between these titles and the creation of local variations, and will also feed content to online editions - currently handled with an inhouse system - as well as to the epaper.
The new installation serves 200 users in the Berne newsroom and local offices throughout the region. The next step of the roll-out plans to bring another 160 users onto Méthode.