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Online webinar on Wed, 27.09.2023: Intelligent cross-media planning (In German)

WDR/Plan.R

Modern and efficient production: Cross-media content planning and distribution with Newsmind Stories

Newsroom Software

Success Story

Plan.R: WDR chooses central newsroom software for planning and distribution

As a public service broadcaster, Westdeutscher Rundfunk focuses on the quality and topicality of its programs. To meet this demand in today’s media landscape, editorial teams and newsrooms must above all be able to work efficiently and collaboratively across all media. This goal is not always easy to achieve for editorial departments, given the rapidly growing number of information sources and the many channels that need to be covered. Content production is becoming increasingly complex.

How can the WDR …

  • handle the flood of information effectively,
  • check the relevance of the incoming news,
  • publish across all media and
  • keep track of everything despite remote work and globally distributed teams?

By going digital and simplifying its editorial processes: With the Newsmind Stories editorial system (WDR Plan.R), WDR uses our AI-based tool to holistically optimize its media processes and centrally manage topics, stories and events. This combines planning for TV, radio, web and social media in a single tool for the first time.

The Plan.R newsroom system supports WDR from research to distribution

With the introduction of Plan.R, WDR is significantly improving the conditions for cross-media, interdisciplinary working. The software supports editorial teams from research through collaborative planning and management to distribution. At the same time, Plan.R respects the individual workflows and needs of the individual editorial teams and newsrooms: The software can be configured and customized individually and comprehensively.

Clear and transparent

AI-supported and automatically, Plan.R monitors information sources such as Twitter feeds, event portals or news and agency tickers, pre-structures the messages and summarizes them in topic clusters. This provides an overview of the current topic and news situation at all times.

Across media

Mit einfach nutzbaren Oberfläche in Plan.R können Redakteur:innen medien- sowie redaktionsübergreifend planen, kollaborativ einen Themenkomplex bearbeiten und stets sehen, welcher Content zu einem Thema auf welcher Plattform geplant ist. This creates transparency and simplifies the collaborative creation and management of content.

Integrated

Platform-specific offers can be easily defined and distributed: either directly from Newsmind Stories, or via the integration of various distribution channels such as specific social media platforms or production systems.

Product details

Research: Plan.R supports topic research by using AI-supported and real-time monitoring of news from agencies, appointments, press articles, social networks and automatically offering them as a stream for WDR. This way, editors no longer miss any news – not even the contributions of competing media houses or Twitter feeds. In addition to external information sources, it also provides search in internal databases. Additional content from the archive (previous publications, image, video and audio contributions) as well as the user’s own research and ideas are thus incorporated into the intuitive tool for cross-media topic planning.

Topics and stories: Information that is related can be easily grouped into a topic. In dynamic topic teams, these can then be further planned, developed and controlled independently of target platforms. It is at the story level that editing becomes platform-specific: editors develop the various stories from a single topic and define, plan, edit and distribute platform-specific offerings as text, video, audio or even social media contributions.

Distribution: WDR sets new standards in the integration of different distribution channels. With just a few clicks, stories can be published on various channels: either directly from the editorial software, or by exporting the content to connected distribution systems.

Clear dashboards: In a form of Kanban boards and streams, teams have an overview of all messages and also planned releases at any time. They always see on which platform which content is planned for a topic. This saves communication and coordination effort.

Asset management: Newsmind Stories’ own asset management enables WDR to consolidate data and assets centrally and store them in a media-neutral manner. Editorial teams can work with and publish content easily across all media.

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