A new partnership between Matt Monahan and Per Östlund has delivered a ‘drop in’ module to add quality print production to Washington Post’s Arc XP.
The cooperation with Swedish developer Roxen has led to Arc’s first installation in Scandinavia – at Mentor Medier in Norway.
Monahan (pictured), who is products vice president at Arc XP, and Roxen chief executive Per Östlund have worked together on major projects including at Grupo Nación in Costa Rica.
“Roxen is a very user-friendly system, and they see print as a channel among others which agrees very well with the logic of Arc XP,” Monahan says. “When a user in Arc finishes a text, they choose a channel, like web, social media or print. Roxen fits very well in that story.”
Östlund says partnering with a full-service supplier such as Arc has enabled them to focus their own development efforts on the “drop-in module” for Arc users, allowing them to also produce print without lowering quality and efficiency.
At Mentor Medier’s largest daily newspaper, Vårt land, the switch to Arc and Roxen was part of a realignment from print to digital as the primary channel. As a result recruitment has been streamlined and production costs reduced without compromising design or content.
Technology and digitalisation director Ole-Jacob Mosvold said Arc XP was the “obvious choice” for a group with many publications and channels. Arc recommended Roxen for print, “and we’ve not regretted our choice,” he said, adding that teamwork and solution were “impressive”.