MEI Installs K4 at Award-Winning Texas Monthly

Jenkintown, PA (June 2, 2009) — Managing Editor Inc. (MEI), an Adobe premier development partner and a leading provider of software solutions for the publishing industry, today announced that it has installed the vjoon K4 Publishing System at Texas Monthly magazine. The Austin, Texas-based publication recently won a 2009 National Magazine Award for General Excellence.

Texas Monthly’s K4 implementation includes licenses for the magazine’s editorial, art and production staff. It will also be incorporating several add-on tools into the new workflow: K4 Web Editor for remote access to the database; K4 XML Exporter for generating content to be posted online; and axaio’s MadeToPrint Auto, which automates output from the K4 system for preflighting, packaging, proofing and PDF generation.

Founded in 1973 by Michael R. Levy, Texas Monthly has a circulation of 300,000 and is read by more than 2.5 million people each month — one out of every eight Texas adults. The magazine provides its readers with ongoing entertainment through its stories on true crime, travel, food, politics, business, the arts and education. Texas Monthly is published by Emmis Publishing, L.P. Emmis owns and operates radio stations and other regional magazines. Texas Monthly has earned ten National Magazine Awards, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, and has been nominated a total of 54 times over its history.

Texas Monthly decided to upgrade from its ten-year-old North Atlantic Publishing System at the same time the magazine began to require more integration with its online department and better tools for tracking file information. Its production team also hoped to continue the transition from Quark to an all-Adobe based workflow that had begun a few years earlier.

After looking into several new systems and going through a long evaluation process including several onsite demonstrations, Texas Monthly decided K4 was the best choice to achieve its goals.

“We were very impressed with K4 and with what MEI offered,” said Ray Helmers, Texas Monthly technology director. “Their willingness to work with us and their ability to provide support surpassed anything else we considered.”

Once Texas Monthly decided on K4, MEI’s customer service continued to be an important factor.

“The training was impressive,” Helmers said. “MEI allowed for more hands-on interaction and built in more time for it than any of the other proposals we reviewed. They gave us the time we needed to get it right.”

Another important part of the installation was ensuring Texas Monthly would be able to use K4 to repurpose print content for publication online, which required custom connectivity with a homegrown Web content management system. Eventually, Texas Monthly’s unique multi-channel setup will include a round-trip feature that can send content back to K4.

Since installing the system in April, Texas Monthly has been steadily transitioning to an entirely K4-based workflow. The company is already planning to expand the system to manage its Texas Monthly Custom Publishing division, which produces customized magazines, books, guides and Web sites for state government departments and various Texas-based companies.

“The TMCP group produces a large number of titles, many under very different circumstances and workflows,” Helmers said. “Some of those will really dovetail with what we’re doing with K4. They’re very eager to start using the system as well.”

In addition to Texas Monthly, K4 customer Wired also won a 2009 National Magazine Award for General Excellence in its circulation category. Other K4 users named as finalists for general excellence were Martha Stewart Living, National Geographic, Bon Appetit, The New Yorker, Fast Company, New York, W, The Atlantic, Time Out New York and Los Angeles magazine. The awards are presented by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

About K4
The vjoon K4 Publishing System, integrated with Adobe InDesign and InCopy, allows publishing professionals to manage design and editorial workflow and to control the entire production process. With its multi-level security controls, open SQL architecture and robust customization options, K4 supports a transparent and secure production workflow for individual workgroups or entire publishing enterprises. K4 is a product of vjoon GmbH (formerly SoftCare) of Hamburg, Germany. With more than 330 systems installed in publishing houses, agencies and magazines worldwide, K4 has already revolutionized the editorial workflow for more than 17,000 users. MEI is the exclusive distributor of K4 in the Americas, with 150 installations managing nearly 9,500 users.

About MEI
Managing Editor Inc. is an industry leader in the development of quality, proven software solutions for the evolving publishing industry. The Page Director® Series of Advertising and Classified Layout Systems, K4 Publishing System, Integrated Production Suite (IPS) and IPS AdTrac deliver automated pagination, workflow and digital asset management solutions to newspaper and magazine publishers, as well as to other print and electronic publishing markets. MEI is an Adobe premier development partner and has twice been named a laureate of the Computerworld Smithsonian Collections. Additional information regarding MEI’s products and services can be found on the company’s Web site (http://www.maned.com).

Managing Editor Inc.
610 Old York Road, Suite 250
Jenkintown, PA 19046

Media Contact:
Paul Weinstein
215-886-5662 x278
pweinstein@maned.com

This release was published on openPR.