Publishing like the Rolling Stone

Wenner Media, publisher of the music magazine Rolling Stone, has upgraded its publishing system, which manages design and editorial workflows.

The SoftCare K4 Publishing System will allow Wenner Media’s editors and graphic designers to work on their articles and layouts at the same time. The first of Wenner Media’s titles to implement K4 was its largest, US Weekly, which has a circulation of about 1.8 million. The magazine’s staff was able to transition to K4 after two issues.

"We were able to roll out all three titles in an extremely quick time frame," says Paul Leung, system administrator for Wenner Media. "We’ve already seen K4’s potential for speeding up production, and we’re excited to see what else we can do with it in the future."

According to a press release from SoftCare, Rolling Stone staff members plan to use the K4 XML Exporter add-on module to repurpose magazine content for use on its Web site. The staff is also considering using K4 to standardize its electronic content in a format that would some day allow it to repurpose in other ways, such as for release on DVDs, along with special editions, or through any other multimedia channel, SoftCare reports.

Wenner Media also publishes Men's Journal, which was able to complete the transition to K4 in just one issue, according to SoftCare.